LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Pl\ifofc 

Chap.-__ '— Copyrisht No. 
Shelf. L.S- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 



BY 



CHARLTON M. LEWIS 

Emily Sanford Professor of English Literature in 
Yale University 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

Cbe 3lt!)enaeum prefifl; 

1 900 "; * 



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SEP 19 1900 

SECOND COPY. 

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80186 

Copyright, 1900 
By CHARLTON M. LEWIS 



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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 




PREFACE 

The only satisfactory way to teach English literature 
to beginners is to put the literature itself in their hands, 
and try to aid them in getting an intelligent appreciation 
of it. The study of literary evolutions is important even 
at first, but only in so far as it is an aid to such appre- 
ciation. It is especially desirable that the student should 
not think of the study of the poets, for example, as con- 
sisting chiefly in the study of what other people have 
written about them. 

Yet it is hardly practicable to dispense with the text- 
book altogether. The earliest authors that have usually 
been read by the under-classmen in Yale College, for 
example, are Spenser and Shakespeare. The writers 
who cannot be enjoyed without some preliminary lin- 
guistic study have been reserved for a later, place in the 
curriculum ; but even Spenser and Shakespeare, and 
their period, can best be taken up after at least a slight 
knowledge of the earlier history of our literature has 
been acquired. 

This book has been written to supply what the author's 
experience has shown to be a real need. Its purpose is 
to give to those who do not, for the present at least, 
require an intimate acquaintance with Old and Middle 
English authors, such a knowledge of their character- 
istics and historical relations as may serve for an intro- 

iii 



iv PREFACE 

duction to the study of the EHzabethan and later periods. 
Several other books covering much of the same ground 
are easily available ; but they are either very elementary 
in treatment or so crowded with barren statements of 
unimportant facts as to defeat the purpose just suggested. 
Mere digests of names and dates may be excellent for 
reference, or as companions to actual reading, but they 
cannot profitably be used alone for continuous study. 

The present work is designed as a sort of compromise. 
It is not a history of our early literature, but an intro- 
duction to the history of our later literature. It does 
not give an account of all our early writers, nor even of 
all the important ones ; but it selects striking repre- 
sentatives of a few great facts in the history of our lit 
erature, and attempts to give a sufficiently full account 
of them to impress the student's imagination and leave 
some distinct trace in his memory. A few extracts, in 
translation, are given from the older writers, and longer 
passages are given in the original from such works as 
can be made fairly intelligible with the aid of occasional 
glosses. In the longest selections, the line numbering 
of the original text is noted in the margin, to facili- 
tate either class-room reference or consultation of 
commentaries. 

The first chapter is inserted because of a grievous need 
within the writer's own experience. Students ought to 
know something of English history before they approach 
the history of English literature, but in fact they often 
do not ; and this chapter, therefore, as well as several 
minor passages in the later chapters, seemed indispen- 
sable. The second chapter is not necessary to the stu- 



PREFACE V 

dent of literary history, but it is desirable that he should 
not be ignorant of the facts contained in it, for literature 
and language do not develop in entire independence of 
each other. Moreover, it will doubtless be found useful 
in the early part of a college course to give the student 
some knowledge of the general nature of linguistic 
studies, if only that he may be intelligently guided in 
his choice of more advanced courses. 

The book is novel in plan, but it was, of course, no 
essential part of its plan to give new facts or new views. 
The author has freely availed himself of the researches 
of others. His chief indebtedness is to Lounsbury's 
and Emerson's Histories, for the materials of the second 
chapter ; but a detailed acknowledgment would include 
Morley, ten Brink, Skeat, Gaston Paris, Petit de Julle- 
ville. Cook, Eicken, Wiilker, Trevelyan, Andrew D. 
White, Brooke, Nutt, Seebohm, and many others. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chronological Table ix 

Chapter I. — The Making of the Race i 

Prehistoric Britain. — The Roman period. — The last of the 
Britons. — The coming of the English. — Alfred and the 
Danes. — The Norman Conquest. — The feudal system. — 
England after the Conquest. 

Chapter II. — The Making of the Language ... 15 

The Indo-European family. — The Teutonic branch. — Eng- 
lish as a Teutonic language. — Old English. — Latin and Old 
French. — The development of Middle English. — English 
dialects. — Miscellaneous foreign influences. 

Chapter III. — Old English Literature 32 

Widsith. — Beowulf. — Caedmon and Bede. — Cynewulf. — 
Judith. — Alfred and the later literature. 

Chapter IV. — The Romances of Chivalry • ... 53 

Asceticism. — Geoffrey and the French romances. — The 
Holy Grail. — Layamon and the English romances. — Malory's 
Morte Darthur. 

Chapter V. — The Early Middle English Period . "]"] 

The Bestiary. — The earliest lyrics. — Fabliau and satire. 
— Richard Rolle of Hampole. 

Chapter VI. — The Age of Chaucer. ...... 98 

The fourteenth century. — The Alliterative Poems. — Piers 
Flowma7t. — Gower. 

vii 



Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter VII. — Chaucer 120 

The life of Chaucer. — Chaucer's French period. — His later 
poems. — The Canterbury Tales. 

Chapter VIII. — The End of the -Middle Ages . . 141 

The Chaucerian school. — The Kingis Quair and The Court 
of Love. — Maundevile^ s Travels. — Ballads. — Dramatic enter- 
tainments. 

Chapter IX. — The Renaissance 162 

Caxton. — Skelton. — Mediaeval universities. — The Revival 
of Learning. — The Humanists. — The Reformation. — Wyatt 
and Surrey. — Conclusion. 

Index 189 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

B.C. S5' Caesar's first invasion of Britain. 

A.D. 43. Invasion of Aulus Plautius, under the Emperor Clau- 
dius. 
387 ? Birth of St. Patrick. 
411. Withdrawal of the Roman legions. 
449? Beginning of conquest by the English. 

? Widsith. 
516.^ Victory of Arthur (?) at Mount Badon. 
597. The Pope sends missionaries to the English. 

? Beowulf. 
680. Death of Caedmon. 
735. Death of Bede. 

? Cynewulf. 
793. The Northmen descend upon Lindisfarne. 

? Judith. 
871-901. Reign of Alfred. 
937. Battle of Brunanburh. 
1 01 6-1 042. England under Danish kings. 
1066. The Norman Conquest. 

1 140. Geoffrey of Monmouth's i7/j-/^r/<^ Britonu7n. 
1 1 54. Last entries in the Old English Chronicle. 
1 1 70. Chrestien's Conte de la Charrette. 
1204. Loss of Normandy. 
1205 ? Layamon's Brut. 
1250? T\i^ Bestiary. T\i^ Cuckoo-Song. 
? Dame Siriz. 
? King Horn. 
? The Vox and the Wolf. 
1 300 ? The Land of Cokaygne. 

ix 



X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

A.D. 1325 ? Birth of Gower. 

1327. Accession of Edward IIL 

1332? Birth of Langland. 

1336? Birth of Chaucer. 

1346. Battle of Crecy. 

1348. First visitation of the Black Death. 

1349. Death of Richard Rolle. 
1356. Battle of Poitiers. 

? Anonymous West Midland Alliterative Poems. 

1359. Chaucer's mihtary service in France. 

1362. English is made the official language of Parliament 

and the courts of law. 

1362 ? First version of Piers Plowman. 

1369. The Book of the Duchess. 

1373. Chaucer's first visit to Italy. 

1 38 1. The Peasants' Revolt. 

1382. Wyclif's expulsion from Oxford. 
1384. Wyclif's death. 

1385 .^^ The Legend of Good Women. 

1386? The Canterbury Tales begun. 

1392. The Confessio Amantis. 

1400. Death of Chaucer Q and Langland). 

1408. Death of Gower. 

1 English version of Mau7idevile^s Travels. 

1 41 3. Occleve's Governail of Princes. 

? The Kingis Quair. 

1437. Death of James I of Scotland. 

1453. Fall of Constantinople. 

1470. Malory's Morte Darthur. 

? The Court of Love. 

1477. Caxton prints Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers. 

1485. End of the Wars of the Roses. 

1498? Erasmus's first visit to England. 

1509. The Praise of Folly, 

1 5 16. The Utopia. . 

1 51 7. Luther's declaration against indulgences begins the 

Reformation. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE XI 

A.D. 1 51 8? Skelton's Colyn Cloute. 

1527. Henry VIII first applies to the Pope for a divorce. 
1533. Henry marries Anne Boleyn. Wyatt and Surrey are 

present at the festivities. 
1535. Execution of Sir Thomas More. 
1542. Death of Wyatt. 

1547. Execution of Surrey. Death of Henry VIII. 
1 547-1 553. Reign of Edward VI. 
1552. Birth of Edmund Spenser. 
1 553-1 558. Reign of Queen Mary. 
1558. Accession of Queen EHzabeth. 
1561. Gorboduc. 
1564. Birth of Shakespeare. 
1576. The Paradise of Dainty Devices, 

1578. The Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions. 

1579. 'Ly\y''s Eupkues. 

1590. First three books of The Faerie Queene. 



EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

CHAPTER I 

THE MAKING OF THE RACE 

1. Prehistoric Britain. — Since the beginning of British 
history Britain has been a home for several races, but 
all have belonged to the Indo-European family. It is 
known, however, that at least three other races occupied 
the island before. Our knowledge of these three is 
obtained from fossils, stone implements, burial mounds, 
and other similar remains. The first race seem to have 
been not very much more civilized than the beasts that 
they killed and ate. The second used stone weapons 
with wooden handles, and were fond of scratching rude 
pictures on bones, or other substances ; they are thought 
to have been related to the modern Esquimaux. The 
third were Iberians, like the modern Basques of the 
Pyrenees Mountains. Of these three races, the first 
two have probably passed away altogether from the Brit- 
ish Islands, but it is supposed that the Iberians have 
left descendants by intermarriage among all the Indo- 
European races of the West. The Iberians of Britain 
were able to spin and weave, till the ground, and sail the 
sea. They had some tribal organization, and built rude 
fortifications. They were barbarians, but hardly savages. 



2 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

The first Indo-Europeans to reach Britain were of the 
Celtic branch of the family. They came several cen- 
turies before the Christian era, and either exterminated 
or absorbed their predecessors. They were in Britain 
when the island first became known to the civilized 
world, and their descendants still inhabit Scotland, 
Wales, Ireland, and even parts of England. The early 
Celts, unlike the Iberians, were learning the use of iron ; 
they lived in wattled huts of clay, sticks, and reeds ; they 
had a well-developed tribal organization, with chieftains 
and aristocracy at the head; and they had a polythe- 
istic religion vaguely similar to that of the Greeks and 
Romans. They had some savage customs, such as that 
of tattooing their bodies, and perhaps (in the earliest 
times) polyandry ; and their druids, who were at once 
priests, physicians, judges, and counsellors, sometimes 
offered human sacrifices to their gods ; but in general 
their civilization was much higher than that of the 
Iberians. 

2. The Roman Period. — Celtic Britain was known com- 
mercially to southern Europe long before the time of 
Caesar, but Caesar's invasion is practically the beginning 
of the island's authentic history. Even this event was 
of less moment than is sometimes supposed, for C^sar 
did not conquer Britain ; perhaps, indeed, he never in- 
tended to do more than terrorize the inhabitants, and 
so ensure the peace of Gaul. He was in Britain for less 
than three months, and he left no material evidences of 
his two expeditions. 

About a century later, however, Claudius invaded 
Britain as a conqueror, and until the year 411 the south- 



THE MAKING OF THE RACE 3 

ern part of the island was a Roman possession. Rome 
lost nearly as rQuch as she gained by the conquest, for 
Britain swallowed up legions almost as fast as it yielded 
spoils ; but a great change was wrought in the island 
itself. The Romans did not slaughter those whom they 
could just as well pacify, and during the Roman period, 
therefore, southern Britain was at least outwardly civil- 
ized. Roman roads were arteries of commerce as well 
as of warfare ; Roman villas superseded the old wattled 
wigwams ; Roman theatres, baths^ and temples, and the 
Latin language, all became familiar to the conquered race. 

The blessings of civilization, however, were dearly 
bought. The Britons paid, as taxes on their land, a 
tenth and sometimes even a fifth of its annual produce. 
They paid taxes for maintenance of troops, taxes for 
entertainment of officials, taxes for repairing roads, taxes 
for carrying stocks of merchandise, and taxes upon suc- 
cession to inheritances ; they paid poll-taxes, customs 
and market dues, and fees for license to do ordinary 
labor ; and all these taxes were collected by foreign 
officials, with little restraint, doubtless, upon corrup- 
tion. The fighting men of the subject Britons were 
deported to wage Rome's wars elsewhere, and in those 
who remained in the island vigorous manhood and the 
love of freedom became nearly extinct. When the last 
Roman legions were withdrawn, it was not because the 
Britons were able to shake off the yoke, but because 
the empire itself was decaying, and Rome needed all 
her strength for self-defense. 

3. The Last of the Britons. — One reason why the Ro- 
man colony in Britain was so hard to maintain was that 



4 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

it was subject to continual depredations from the north 
and east. The Scots, and other Celtic races in northern 
Britain and Ireland, were not reached by Roman civili- 
zation, and were a constant terror to their enervated 
kinsmen in the south ; and for at least a century before 
the Romans left, the eastern coast was familiar with the 
Saxon pirates from across the sea. After the final 
withdrawal of Roman protection, fruitless appeals were 
made for further aid. One famous message said : '^ To 
Aetius, thrice consul, the groans of the Britons. The 
barbarians drive us to the sea ; the sea drives us 
back to the barbarians ; we are either slaughtered or 
drowned.'' 

In addition to these troubles, the Britons suffered 
from domestic disorders. Rome had left them only 
half civilized. The upper classes continued to speak 
Latin, and doubtless would have been glad to maintain 
the Roman system of civil and military discipline ; but 
the old tribal feeling was too strong, and whatever 
manhood was left in the mass of the population wasted 
itself in petty tribal squabbles. Christianity had reached 
the island a century or two before the Romans left it, 
but after their departure it seems to have become more 
nominal than real, and life outside of the largest towns 
was vicious and violent. 

Two notable names stand out from the very obscure 
history of these times — those of Patricius and Ambro- 
sius Aurelianus. The former was a native of Scotland, 
but was kidnapped in his boyhood and sold as a slave in 
Ireland. After suffering many hardships he was able 
to devote himself to the reformation of the country ; 



THE MAKING OF THE RACE 5 

he became a bishop of the Irish Church, and has ever 
since been its patron saint. Ambrosius Aurehanus, on 
the other hand (or perhaps simply Ambrosius), is the 
probable original of the legendary King Arthur. His 
name survives in the name of Amesbury (Ambrose- 
burg), a town often mentioned in Arthurian story ; and 
the curious fortification still extant on Salisbury plain 
may well have been one of his strongholds. As the 
piratical invaders from the east penetrated farther into 
the heart of Britain, Ambrosius for a long time made 
a successful stand against them. He is the supposed 
hero of at least one real British victory, that at Mt. 
Badon about the year 516; but the legendary Arthur, 
who overthrew the Saxons in twelve great battles and 
made a realm and reigned, is like a composite photo- 
graph, being credited with the deeds of many others 
besides Ambrosius, as well as countless deeds that 
were never done at all. 

4. The Coming of the English. — The barbarian invaders 
from over the sea, who first harried the coasts of Britain 
and finally conquered the island, were known to the 
Britons as Saxons, but it would be more proper to call 
them English. They were in fact of three kindred 
tribes — Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Soon after the 
Roman garrisons were withdrawn, these people began 
making permanent settlements on the British coasts. 
Gradually they pressed inland, and by about 600 they 
had become possessed of the greater part of what is now 
England. They came from the southern part of the 
Danish peninsula, and the adjacent coast stretching 
westward towards the Rhine. The Jutes, the least 



6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

important of the three tribes, settled only Kent and 
a few inland districts. The Saxons^ took the rest of 
Britain south of the Thames, spreading as far to the 
west as they could ; and the Angles seized the eastern 
coast north of the Thames, and gradually pushed inland 
all along the line. The Angles were the most numerous 
and probably the most intellectual ; and they (unlike the 
Saxons and Jutes) came as a whole nation, bringing their 
national life and leaving their old home desolate. Civi- 
lization and culture developed among them in northern 
England earlier and faster than among the Saxons or 
Jutes in the south, and both Saxons and Jutes began in 
very early times to speak of themselves too as *^ Eng- 
lish.^' 

These English were Germanic peoples, and their reli- 
gion was akin to other Germanic religions. Early in the 
seventh century they were Christianized by Roman mis- 
sionaries, but the names of some of their original deities 
still survive in our names of days : Tin's day, Woden's 
day, etc. Moreover, Christianity by no means reconciled 
them with their Celtic predecessors in Britain. Scot- 
land, and for a long time the western part of England, 
remained independent and hostile. The fate of the 
British in the conquered parts of the island is not very 
definitely known, but certainly many were slain and 
almost as certainly many others were retained as wives 
or as slaves. The English race therefore had from this 
time on a strain of Celtic blood. 

1 The modern kingdom of Saxony has no connection with the ancient 
tribe. It was arbitrarily named, at a much later date, and its inhab- 
itants are not Saxons at all, in the strict sense. 



THE MAKING OF THE RACE 7 

By the end of the sixth century seven distinct king- 
doms, commonly known as the Heptarchy, were estab- 
lished in Britain. At that time the kingdom of Kent 
was the most powerful of the Heptarchy, and its king 
exercised some sort of overlordship over most of the 
others. In the seventh and eighth centuries the An- 
glian kingdoms of Northumberland and Mercia attained 
a similar position, and in the eighth and ninth centuries 
in turn the kingdom of the West Saxons came to the 
front. Thus Jutes, Angles, and Saxons enjoyed the 
supremacy in succession. There was for a long time 
no real political unity ; but all were English, all spoke 
English, and all felt a strong unifying force in the 
church ; for they had not one church of Wessex and 
another of Kent, but a single ecclesiastical organization 
for the whole Heptarchy. Therefore, after several gen- 
erations of West Saxon overlordship, and especially after 
it became necessary to unite against common foes, the 
kings of Wessex naturally came to be in reality kings of 
England. 

5. Alfred and the Danes. — A general westward migra- 
tion of races was going on in northern Europe through- 
out the dark ages, and it did not stop in England with 
the arrival of the English. As they had harried the 
Britons, so various tribes of Northmen now harried 
them. These Scandinavian barbarians had moved 
southward over the Danish peninsula, but were prob- 
ably turned back by the powerful Germanic empire of 
Charlemagne, and in the eighth century they began 
to attack the eastern coast of England. In the middle 
of the ninth century they began making settlements. 



8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

instead of mere raids, and the Danes, the most vigorous 
of all the Northmen, speedily overpowered the northern 
and eastern members of the Heptarchy. 

Alfred came to the throne of the West Saxons in 871, 
just as the Danes were beginning to attack Wessex 
itself. Alfred was one of the really great men of 
history, and he showed his greatness in his long and 
bitter struggle with the enemy. Sometimes he beat 
them off by superiority of force or strategy ; sometimes, 
when less successful, he bought them off ; but they had 
little fear of force and less respect for treaties, and the 
peace therefore was never long. One season's campaign 
resulted in seemingly irretrievable disaster, and the king 
himself passed many weeks as a refugee, hiding in 
swamps and woodland ; but he was secretly rallying his 
forces and time was weakening the Danes, and the next 
season witnessed a complete turn of fortune. The 
worst of the struggle ended in a truce of uncertain date, 
sometimes called the Peace of Wedmore, by which the 
Danes were bound to keep within certain limits, and 
Wessex was freed of them. The future of England as 
an English rather than Danish nation was thus assured. 

These Danes of the north and east constituted a 
separate nation in England, and for a long " time after 
Alfred's death they contended with the English for the 
mastery. The south finally won a decisive victory at 
the battle of Brunanburh in 937, and after this the 
Danes gradually became a part of the English nation. 
They accepted civilization and Christianity, and as the 
genius of their language was much like that of the Eng- 
lish, the latter was easy for their children to learn. But 



• THE MAKING OF THE RACE 9 

new hordes of Danes were continually appearing on the 
coast. Even Alfred, after the Peace of Wedmore, had 
to defend himself against newcomers. He met and 
defeated them at sea, and for this reason has somewhat 
fantastically been called the founder of the English navy. 
Some of the later kings were less successful, and the 
Danish raids culminated in a sweeping conquest in 1013. 
English and Anglicized Northmen united against the 
new invaders, but they were defeated; and in 1016 
Cnut the Dane became undisputed king of England. 

This conquest, however, was military rather than 
national. The English army and royal family were 
overthrown, but the country was not overrun with for- 
eigners. Cnut was a wise ruler, and he wielded his 
power for all England, not for the newly arrived Danes 
alone. Consequently, although three successive Danish 
kings sat on the throne, England remained England, and 
the effect of the conquest upon its life and its later liter- 
ature was surprisingly small. 

6. The Norman Conquest. — Britain was not the only 
western country preyed upon by the Northmen. Early 
in the tenth century they seized parts of the northern 
coast of France, and made the district now called Nor- 
mandy their own. As the Danes in England became 
English, so these Northmen or Normans in France be- 
came French. The Scandinavian, while no less hardy 
than the Englishman, seemed always readier to adapt 
himself to new ways of living. 

The policy of the Norman dukes was to ally themselves 
intimately with both France and England, and before 
the middle of the eleventh century the Normans and 



lO EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the English were therefore closely related by commerce, 
travel, and intermarriage. Many Normans had settled 
permanently in England, and some had risen to high 
positions of influence. Otherwise the success of the 
Normans in the coming struggle could hardly have been 
so easy as it was. 

When William, the Duke of the Normans, formed the 
design of invading England, it was easy to find pretexts. 
For example, he was a cousin of the English king, and 
the latter promised him the succession ; when, therefore, 
upon the king's death, the crown was given to Harold, 
this violated promise afforded William an argument of 
some practical value, though of no legal validity what- 
ever. He sent a message demanding the throne, which 
was refused. Thereupon, in 1066, reinforcing his own 
army with adventurers from all quarters, he crossed the 
channel. His undertaking had seemed to many of his 
advisers almost hopeless, and indeed at the battle of 
Senlac (or Hastings) he narrowly escaped ruin ; but the 
English, though they had an impregnable position, were 
undone by bad generalship and worse discipline. Harold 
was killed, and William, after this one overwhelming 
victory, had only to bide his time patiently until the 
English should themselves invite him to take the crown. 
The conquest was thus completed by the peaceful 
process of law. 

This conquest resembled that by the Danes more than 
that of the Celtic Britons by the English. The Nor- 
mans spread over the upper surface of English life, 
occupying the high places but leaving the English 
masses comparatively in peace. They never came over 



THE MAKING OF THE RACE II 

in very great numbers, and even now there are compar- 
atively few in the middle or lower classes who can boast 
of Norman blood. But, on the other hand, unUke the 
Danes, the Normans were acclimatized slowly. For a 
long time the language of the schools and of court life 
was French or Latin ; and the spirit of English life, 
while by no means wholly revolutionized, did, as we 
shall see, undergo many changes. 

7. The Feudal System. — One of the most important 
changes effected by the Norman Conquest was the 
introduction of the feudal system. This was a system 
of government under which every powerful lord had 
many vassals, tenants of his lands, who were ready to 
fight his battles for him, and whom he in turn was 
bound to protect. Each of these tenants might be lord 
over subtenants of his own, while the first lord was 
perhaps himself a tenant and vassal of the king. This 
system had become well developed on the continent 
before the conquest, but in England it' had existed only 
in a rudimentary form. 

The bond between lord and tenant, under the feudal 
system, was something more than a mere contract. It 
was more like a contract of marriage than like a modern 
lease of land. The relation was commonly effected by 
a peculiar ceremony called "commendation." The ten- 
ant uncovered his head, loosed his belt, and kneeling, 
with his hands between those of his lord, took a personal 
oath of fealty, and thus became his **man " or "vassal." 
The rights of the master over his man were in some 
respects almost rights of property ; yet in general the 
system involved no loss of dignity on the vassal's part. 



12 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

William himself, as Duke of Normandy, was a vassal 
of the King of France, but this fact merely symbolized, 
in the mediaeval fashion, the honorable relation between 
the duchy and the kingdom. 

The political and military effects of the feudal system 
in England were far-reaching. The lands of those who 
opposed William at Senlac, or elsewhere, were confis- 
cated and bestowed upon the Conqueror's vassals. 
England thus became subject to him not only as king 
but also as feudal overlord. On the continent William 
had seen that feudalism created a strong centrifugal 
tendency, for the great barons were often able to wield 
enormous power, and they were naturally often tempted 
to assert their virtual independence of the crown. This 
he sought to prevent in England by a modification of the 
continental system ; and he accordingly required each 
important landowner in his new kingdom to take the 
oath of fealty, not merely to his im.mediate superior, but 
also to himself as supreme overlord. This precaution 
made it impossible for England to be split up into a 
number of independent seigniories, and while it did not 
prevent many bitter conflicts between the power of the 
crown and that of the greater barons, it did materially 
help to make the supremacy of the former secure. 

In the history of literature, however, the social work- 
ings of the feudal system are still more important. The 
idea of knighthood grew out of the feudal relation, and 
out of the knightly fashions of the time grew the literary 
ideals of chivalry. The feudal system was probably of 
most benefit to such as could attain to knighthood, for 
the knights were the aristocracy of the age ; and we 



THE MAKING OF THE RACE 1 3 

shall expect, in consequence, to find the literature of 
the middle ages essentially aristocratic in tone. 

8. England after the Conquest. — In Normandy, William 
had been merely Duke of the Normans. This rank 
carried no absolute power ; it would not be far from the 
truth to say that he was but the chief one (the dux) of 
many barons. In England, as king, it was necessary for 
him to assert a higher function, if the unity of the king- 
dom was to be assured. The greater Norman barons 
naturally preferred to regard him merely as their feudal 
overlord, to whom they had done homage ; but William 
insisted that they were not merely his vassals but also 
his subjects. For the first century or more after the 
conquest, the chief historical events in England were 
the struggles of the kings with the greater barons. The 
kings who were wise enlisted on their side the sympa- 
thies of the lesser barons and of the common people, 
and thus the interests of many of the Normans were 
consolidated with those of the English. This was one 
of the ways in which the two peoples became gradually 
fused into one. 

In 1204 England lost Normandy, and this seeming 
misfortune was in fact a great benefit. It became nec- 
essary for the Norman barons to retire to Normandy, 
or else to give up their Norman possessions and become 
really Englishmen. This was another aid to the fusion 
of the races. The Norman families retained their dis- 
tinct identity for a long time ; as a rule, they continued 
to speak French for two or three centuries after the 
conquest. A historical work, finished about 1360, says 
that ** children in school, against the usage and manner 



14 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of all other nations, are compelled to leave their own 
language, and to construe their lessons and their matters 
in French, and have, since the Normans came first into 
England. Also, gentlemen's children are taught to 
speak French from the time that they are rocked in 
their cradle, . . . and rustics wish to make themselves 
like gentlemen, and strive with great earnestness to 
speak French, in order to be thought the more of.'' 
It is clear, however, that even at the time when this 
was written, this state of things was coming to an end. 
A statute of 1362 made English the language of courts 
of justice, and a historian who wrote in 1385 says that at 
that date the children in the schools were using English 
instead of French. It seems, from this and other evi- 
dence, that in the course of the fourteenth century 
English became the family language of all classes ; 
and when this happened, the distinction between the 
Norman and English races ceased to be of much 
practical importance. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 

9. The Indo-European Family. — A family of languages 
is a group of languages so similar to one another in 
structure and vocabulary as to compel the belief that 
they are all descended from some common ancestor. 
There are about a hundred such families in existence, of 
which the Indo-European, Semitic, Hamitic, and Tura- 
nian are the best known. All the Turanian languages, 
for example, such as Finnish, Turkish, and Mongolian, 
afford evidences of more or less close kinship with one 
another ; but between them and the Semitic languages, 
such as Hebrew, there is no more similarity than may 
be due to occasional borrowings, or perhaps to mere 
chance. 

* The members of the Indo-European family are now 
scattered over Europe and Asia, and both the languages 
themselves and the people who speak them differ widely 
among themselves; but it is indisputable that the lan- 
guages are descended from a common parent speech, and 
it seems probable that most of the peoples who speak 
them are descended from one parent race. It is pos- 
sible, from internal evidence, to learn much about the 
parent race and language. For example, from the pres- 
ence in many widely scattered members of the family 
of cognate words for "father," "mother," "grandson," 

15 



l6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

etc., we are clearly safe in arguing that the original Indo- 
Europeans had a well-developed domestic life. From 
similar evidence it is almost as conclusively shown that 
they were a pastoral people who knew the uses of milk 
and honey. Efforts have been made to locate their origi- 
nal home by showing what kinds of animals and plants 
were known to them, but the evidence is very uncertain. 
Perhaps they lived on the northern shores of the Black 
Sea, perhaps somewhere in central Asia. At any rate, 
they separated many centuries before the beginning of 
their recorded history. 

The whole Indo-European family is divisible into 
smaller groups or branches. For example, the English 
and German languages are more closely related to each 
other than to French or Welsh ; and this fact is indi- 
cated by saying that they belong to the Teutonic branch 
of the family, while French belongs to the Latin branch, 
and Welsh to the Celtic. There are six other branches 
generally recognized, their mutual relationship being 
indicated in the following table ; but these three are of 
most interest in our present study, and the Teutonic 
branch is the only one that we need consider in detail. 

Indo-European 

I 



Asiatic European 

I I 



Indian Iranian Armenian Celtic Teutonic Albanian Slavic Latin Hellenic 

I I 

Sanskrit, Russian, 

etc. etc. 
Persian, etc. 

10. The Teutonic Branch. — In the last section it 
was said that English and German are more nearly 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 1 7 

related than English and French. This fact is some- 
what obscured by the great influence exercised by 
French over English in modern times. After the Nor- 
man Conquest so many French words became natural- 
ized in English that French now seems to many students 
less foreign than German ; but in order to assign our 
language to the proper branch of the Indo-European 
family, we must consider only blood relations, not rela- 
tions by adoption ; we must look at English as it was in 
its infancy, before it was exposed to Latin and French 
influences. When we do this we find that English is 
unmistakably Teutonic. 

The Teutonic languages are distinguished from those 
of other branches by a large number of very old words 
which belong to them in common, and to them exclu- 
sively ; but there are two other peculiarities besides 
those of vocabulary which enable us most decisively to 
prove their mutual relationship. One of these pecul- 
iarities is a certain uniformity, or law, as to the accen- 
tuation of words. The original law of Teutonic accent 
was, in brief, that the root syllable received the stress, 
except in nouns and adjectives, which accented the first 
syllable. If a word was inflected, the accent did not 
vary with the inflectional endings. In Latin, on the 
other hand, the accent depended on the quantity of the 
penult ; and in Greek it in part depended on the quantity 
of syllables, and in part was seemingly arbitrary. Com- 
pare, for example, begins with incipit; brother^ brother- 
hood with socius, societas ; and try to find a parallel in 
English or German for Xuo), \e\vica^ XekvKevai^ XeXvfcco<; ! 
This Teutonic law of accent is part of the genius of the 



1 8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Teutonic languages, and shows amazing persistency even 
in modern English, after centuries of linguistic adulter- 
ation. The noun and the verb prodicce, with their dif- 
ferent accents, illustrate the still prevailing tendency to 
throw back the accent of substantives. 

The second distinguishing feature of the Teutonic 
languages is a peculiar change which their consonants 
have suffered. The consonant sounds chiefly affected 
are those known to students of Greek grammar as the 
three classes of mutes, viz. : 

labial mutes, tt, ^, </>. 
palatal mutes, k, y, x- 
lingual mutes, r, 8, 0. 

The change referred to is as follows : Words in the 
original Indo-European language which were retained in 
the Teutonic branch, in many cases changed the second 
consonant in each of these classes to the first, and the 
first to the third. Thus, if there was a /? in the Indo- 
European word, it became ir in the Teutonic ; 7 became 
ic ; T became 6, and so on through the list. The law of 
this consonant shift was discovered by Grimm, and is 
known as Grimm's Law. Examples are seen in the 
English foot^ German Fuss ; cf. Greek 7rob9, Latin pes, 
in which the initial consonant preserves the original 
Indo-European form. So English knozv, German keit- 
nen, from the same root as ^L^voyaKOi), cognosco ; English 
hen^ German HaJm^ from the same root as fcavdl^a), 
canere. In the last example the sound of % is repre- 
sented by a less guttural aspirate, //. This law is not 
universal in its application, but the exceptions to it are 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 



19 



governed by regular laws of their own. These, how- 
ever, need not be considered here. 

11. English as a Teutonic Language. — Each of the nine 
great branches of the family underwent further ramifi- 
cations of its own. Thus from the Latin branch sprang 
in ancient times the language of the Samnites, and in 
more modern times all the eight so-called romance 
languages, chief among which are French, Italian, and 
Spanish. The history of the Teutonic branch is shown 
in the following table : 

Teutonic Branch 

I 



West Germanic 



East Germanic 



Anglo-Frisian 



Common German 



Gothic 



Old Norse 
I 



Old 
English 



Middle 
English 

Modern 
English 



Old 
Frisian 



Flemish, 
etc. 



Old High 
German 



I 
Middle High 
German 

I 

Modern High 
German 



Old Low 
German 



Dutch, 
etc. 



West 
Norse 



East 
Norse 



Icelandic Swedish 

and and 

Norwegian Danish 



It must be kept in mind that the ancestral language 
designated in the table as ''Teutonic" is not in exist- 
ence, and that no express record of it has ever been 
found ; but by comparing the existing Indo-European 
languages we can prove that such a tongue must have 
been spoken at some remote past time ; in other words, 
the ancestors of all the Teutonic peoples probably kept 
together and spoke a common language for a long time 
after they separated from the other branches of the 
family. In like manner the Anglo-Frisian, the West 



20 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and East Germanic, and the Common German are 
purely hypothetical languages ; the only " evidence of 
their past existence is found by comparative study of 
the younger tongues now extant ; but that evidence is 
in most cases conclusive. 

The table, therefore, merely presents graphically the 
inferences drawn by students of comparative linguistics. 
Such students do not always agree. Some, for exam- 
ple, reject the notion of an Anglo-Frisian tongue alto- 
gether, and derive from the West Germanic two groups 
of modern Germanic languages, the high and the low. 
What we ordinarily call '' German" is Modern High 
German ; while English, Flemish, and Dutch, according 
to this view, should all be regarded as belonging to the 
Low German group. 

Whichever view we take of this matter, one distinctive 
feature of High German is worth noting. When we 
compare English and German cognate words, we often 
find their general likeness partly obscured by a differ- 
ence in consonants. Close study has shown that this 
difference is due to a second change which High Ger- 
man has suffered, along the line pointed out by Grimm's 
law. " According to Grimm's law, certain consonants 
moved up one step in their respective classes, in the 
days before English and German separated ; accord- 
ing to another law, recently discovered, some of these 
consonants took a second step in the same direction, 
after the separation ; but this second step was in general 
taken only in the High German member of the branch. 
Thus we find in German dick for the English thick ; 
Dorn for thorn ; durch for throiLgh ; Durst for thirst ; 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 21 

Tail for dew ; tetter for dear ; Tier for deer ; etc. In 
some cases by comparing Latin or Greek with English 
and German, we can see the progress of both consonant 
changes in the same word. For example, the initial 
consonant of the word represented in Greek by tovo^^ 
and in Latin by tonare^ suffered by Grimm's law before 
it appeared in the English thunder, and then in High 
German suffered the second change before it finally 
appeared as d in Donner. 

12. Old English. — When the Angles, Saxons, and 
Jutes came to Britain, they did not speak exactly alike ; 
but the differences were so slight that we regard them 
as speaking not three languages but three dialects of 
one language. That one language is often called Anglo- 
Saxon, and this name is correct enough, as the Angle 
and Saxon members of the invading people were so 
much more numerous than the Jutes ; but it is now 
more customary to speak of it as Old English. This 
name serves better to indicate the relation of the lan- 
guage to modern English, and it also presents a conven- 
ient parallel to the accepted names of Old High German, 
Old French, Old Norse, etc. The English of the later 
middle ages, after the Norman Conquest, is commonly 
called Middle English. 

Of the three original forms of Old English, that 
spoken by the Angles has proved of most importance 
in the history of the language. It split up at an early 
date into two dialects, called Northumbrian and Mercian, 
after the names of the two chief Anglian kingdoms in 
the Heptarchy. From the speech of the Saxons also 
there sprang several different dialects, but the foremost 



22 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of them was the West Saxon, that of Alfred's kingdom. 
These three dialects — Northumbrian, Mercian, and West- 
Saxon — were spoken in the northern, midland, and south- 
ern parts of English Britain, respectively. Owing to the 
long political supremacy of Wessex, the southern dialect 
attained a decided literary supremacy toward the end of 
the Old English period, and nearly all the Old English 
literature that has come down to us is written in West 
Saxon. Several centuries later, however, after the 
Norman Conquest, the speech of the midland counties 
became the prevailing dialect, and from it grew our 
modern English language. Thus it appears that the 
standard Old English was not the parent of the standard 
modern English, in the strictest sense; but the con- 
nection between the different parts of England was so 
close, even in early times, that the dialects influenced 
each other very materially,' and modern English there- 
fore contains many words which owe their form to the 
northern or southern dialect rather than to the Mercian. 
Indeed it is hardly fair to say that it is descended from 
the Mercian dialect at all, except in a geographical 
sense. 

Old English, in all its dialectic forms, was a much 
more synthetic language than our modern tongue. 
There were several declensions of nouns, with from 
four to six distinct case-forms, and two declensions of 
adjectives corresponding to those of modern German. 
Verbs, too, were somewhat more freely inflected than 
they are now. The language, of course, lacked nearly 
all our words of Latin origin, and while much of its 
vocabulary has remained, it possessed many Teutonic 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 23 

words which have been lost. The student will have 
little difficulty in identifying the following specimen : 

On anginne gesceop God heofonan and eorSan.^ Sec 
eorSe w^s idel and semtig ; and Siestru wseron ofer ^sere 
neowolnesse bradnesse ; and Godes gast waes gefered ofer 
waeteru. God cwaet5 "Sa, ^^Geweort5e leoht " ; and leoht 
wearS geworht. 

13. Latin and Old French. — The French are a Celtic 
race, but their language is not a Celtic language. They 
lost their original tongue when the Romans conquered 
Gaul. It will be remembered that Roman rule in Britain 
never wholly Latinized the British Celts ; but the fortune 
of their Gallic cousins was far different. This was 
because Gaul became a Roman province a whole cen- 
tury earlier, and because it was nearer to Rome. Thus 
it came about that before the Roman Empire itself was 
endangered by barbarian foes, there had been ample 
time for the. Gauls to become in effect Romans. They 
spoke Latin, not that of Cicero and Vergil, but the Low 
Latin of the Roman camps. This Low Latin, in the 
mouths of people without any literature, became more 
and more perverted, and finally assumed the forms which 
we know as the Romance languages. In Spain it be- 
came Spanish, in France it became French, or, as we 
call the language of the middle ages. Old French. 

The change from Low Latin to French may be 
briefly described as a process of crushing. The most 
striking fact about it is that the accented syllable of a 
Latin word was retained, though perhaps altered ; but 
the syllables before the accent were frequently crushed 

^The character ^ represents the sound of the modern th. 



24 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

together, or syncopated, and those after the accent were 
regularly lopped off altogether, or replaced by an e mute. 
Thus caballum becomes ckeval, damnatictiin becomes 
dommage, exfrigidare becomes effrayer, patrem becomes 
pere. The permanence of the accented syllable accounts 
for some interesting phenomena in the case of words 
which change their accent with inflectional endings. 
Thus from senior and seniorem came the doublets sire 
and seigneur; from trovator and trovatorem, trouvere 
and troubadour. 

This crushing process was, of ..course, only one of a 
number of changes which regularly took place in the 
passage from Latin into French. It will serve, however, 
as a type, and will suggest how complicated has been 
the history of those Latin words which have found their 
way through the French into our own language. Here, 
however, caution must be observed. The most common 
of our Latin words came to us by reason of the Norman 
Conquest ; they were French before they became Eng- 
lish ; but we have also received Latin words from other 
sources. In the first place, the Celtic Britons used 
Latin freely, and they doubtless contributed a very few 
Latin words to the vocabulary of their English conquer- 
ors. Mount is probably an example ; and the endings 
-caster and -Chester in names of English towns indicate 
the sites of fortified camps (castra) in the period of 
Roman occupation. In the second place, several hun- 
dred words came from direct contact between Rome and 
the English before the Norman Conquest. We might 
think, for example, that because the word butter occurs 
in both English and German, it must have belonged to 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 25 

the common Teutonic stock ; but in fact it is not improb- 
able that the Teutonic races never ate the article until 
they heard of it from the Romans as buterium. Thirdly, 
a vast number of words have been knowingly borrowed 
from the Latin in more modern times. Such a word as 
unintelligibility did not, of course, pass naturally from 
Latin through French to English ; it was created bodily 
by some person with a classical education, who was con- 
sciously adapting means to ends. Such words are often 
easily distinguishable from those of natural growth, for 
they have not gone through the crushing process. For 
example, legalitatern became in Old French loyalte. 
Modern French has it in the form loyatite^ but it grew 
into English before it lost the second /, and our loyalty 
is the result. The word legality^ on the other hand, is 
a learned word from the same original. It should be 
noted that the latter word preserves the Latin sense, 
as well as its form, more purely than the other. 

14. The Development of Middle English. — For three 
centuries after the Norman Conquest two languages 
were spoken in England. French and English did not 
mix, because the two races held apart, and we therefore 
find that English remained comparatively pure for about 
a century. It is usual to assign the date 1150 for the 
end of Old and the beginning of Middle English, but of 
course it must be understood that the change was a 
gradual one. A Norman baron perhaps had an English 
wife ; certainly he had English tenants and servants, 
and in later times he had common political interests with 
Englishmen of all classes. The two races had to speak 
a common language, and the language they gradually 



26 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

learned to speak was a compromise between English and 
French. Naturally enough, words in the new language 
which were more often used by the court circles were 
of French origin, while the everyday words of common 
people were English. Readers of Ivanhoe will remem- 
ber that what the English herdsman called ox became 
beef when it was killed and dressed for the Norman's 
board. In like manner we inherit from Old English 
most such words as land, tree, grass, field, sew, sow, 
reap, mow, bake ; while from French come such words 
as armor, homage, park, peer, ransom, castle, tapestry, 
dtike. 

The French and English words in the new language 
were about equally numerous ; but nevertheless the 
French element is of comparatively very small importance 
in either Middle or Modern English. This is for two 
reasons. In the first place, the English words are those 
that we use oftenest. **The article the, for illustration, 
is found in nearly every sentence of Shakespeare ; but in 
estimating his whole vocabulary it is reckoned for no 
more than, for instance, cousin-germafi ox fanatical, either 
one of which appears only once in all his writings." ^ 
An author who uses as many French as English words 
may easily use the latter so much oftener that the total 
French element in his style will amount to only ten or 
fifteen per cent. 

In the second place, the inflections of the new speech 
were English rather than French. These are what 
mark the real controlling genius of a language. When 
we borrow a French verb, for example, we naturally 

^ Lounsbury, History of the English Language^ p. 105. 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 2/ 

conjugate it according to English custom. It would 
be as absurd to say / reconjiais for / reconnoitred as to 
say / telegrapsa for / telegraphed. This is because the 
essentials of English grammar are deeply rooted in the 
consciousness of every one of us. The same thing was 
true in the Middle English period, and the French words 
then taken in wer^ subjected to a thoroughly English 
treatment. 

Still, the French language did exert a considerable 
influence upon English syntax, and even upon English 
forms. It aided largely in making English an analytic 
rather than a synthetic language ; that is, in substi- 
tuting the use of prepositions and auxiliaries for inflec- 
tional endings. We say to send instead of sendan, and 
the face of the deep for tsaere neowohiesse brddnesse. In 
Old English such analytic phrases were not uncommon, 
and there was a growing tendency to favor them ; but 
the French influence doubtless strengthened this tend- 
ency materially. The loss of inflectional endings was 
natural under the circumstances, for they are hard things 
for a foreigner to master. 

The Old English plural ended sometimes in -as, some- 
times in -an ; sometimes it was formed in other ways, as 
by modifying the root vowel. We have survivals of the 
three forms specified in the plurals of day, ox, and man, 
respectively. In French the plural was regularly formed 
by adding s, and therefore the tendency of Normans 
would naturally be to favor the first of the three English 
modes of declension. In fact, the s form became almost 
invariable in Middle and Modern English, and this may 
be ascribed largely to French influence. So also the 



28 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

increased use of more and most in the comparison of 
adjectives, and the almost total loss of gender in English 
substantives, would be natural results of the foreigner's 
confusion of mind, although we cannot say that with- 
out French influence they would not have occurred 
at all. 

15. English Dialects. — In the Middle English period 
the language was still by no means the same throughout 
England. The three principal dialects — Northern, Mid- 
land, and Southern — were descended from the Northum- 
brian, Mercian, and West Saxon of- the Old English 
period, though with so much adulteration from each 
other and from outside that their descent is thoroughly 
obscured. The three can by no means be defined by 
exact geographical limits, though in a general way the 
Humber and the Thames may be regarded as marking 
their boundaries ; for in the same region different classes 
of people often spoke differently, and in the speech of 
many there was some mixture of dialects. Neverthe- 
less the local characteristics were striking enough, and 
while comparatively few spoke a single dialect in perfect 
purity, there were several recognized standards, and 
each person conformed to one of them with more or less 
strictness. For example, in the North the usual form 
for "we hope " was we hopes, while the Midland was we 
hopen, and the Southern we hopeth. Literature was pro- 
duced in all three dialects, but when a northern manu- 
script was copied by a southern or midland clerk there 
was naturally some confusion of forms, and we therefore 
have in our extant mediaeval literature a mixture which 
sometimes proves very puzzling. 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 29 

These dialects still survive, but there is no longer a 
triple standard. As communication became easier, and 
education more general, one or another of the dialects 
necessarily had to take the lead. The favored one, as 
it happened, was the Midland, and especially that variety 
known as East Midland. The reason for this was chiefly 
that London, Oxford, and Cambridge were all in the 
eastern midland counties, and the court and the univer- 
sities thus combined to fix a standard for educated men. 
Well-defined dialects of English are still spoken in 
Yorkshire, Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, and elsewhere, 
but only by the less educated classes. In America the 
old dialects hardly exist at all, for a Yorkshire immigrant 
does not generally settle among neighbors who speak 
like himself ; and his children, in consequence, are not 
limited to his dialect. Most native Americans, therefore, 
talk substantially alike, but two uneducated workingmen 
from opposite corners of England can hardly understand 
each other. 

The northern dialect has had a more illustrious his- 
tory than the southern, fcrr it developed into what we 
now call Scotch. This, of course, is very different from 
the Gaelic of the Scotch Highlands, which is a Celtic 
language. Scotch is not a distinct language at all, but 
a dialect of English. The reason why it has maintained 
such a comparatively independent position is that Scot- 
land until 1603 was a separate kingdom. As East Mid- 
land attained supremacy over the other dialects, it 
gradually became the standard speech in England north 
of the Humber ; but across the Scottish border there 
was a separate national life, and the influences of London, 



30 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Oxford, and Cambridge were hardly felt. The Scotch 
people of the fifteenth century called their language Eng- 
lish, and it had as good a right to the name as the English 
of England. It was only upon the union of the kingdoms 
that the northern dialect lost its independent position. 
Until Shakespeare's time any Scotchman who wrote a 
book would naturally use his own form of the language. 
Now it is hardly written at all, except to give local color 
in songs or novels, or for other special purposes. 

16. Miscellaneous Foreign Influences. — The great major- 
ity of words in the dictionary are foreign-born, but the 
native words are the blood and bone of the language. 
With the exception of the mediaeval French influence, 
already pointed out, no foreign influence has materially 
affected its spirit. An enormous number of compara- 
tively recent borrowings, such as czar^ banyan^ caoitt- 
ckouc, help to swell our vocabulary, but the real genius 
of the language owes nothing to Poland, Hindustan, or 
South America ; and a similar assertion might be made, 
though with less absolute truth, of the learned and scien- 
tific words from Greek and Latin, such as electricity^ 
locom otive, cryptogram . 

There are two languages, however, which we should 
expect to find exerting a considerable influence on our 
own, namely, the Celtic language of the early Britons 
and the Old Norse. Many efforts have been made to 
identify the Celtic elements in English, and there are 
long lists of English words which have their analogues 
in Welsh, or Gaelic, or even Irish. Among these are 
basket^ garter^ button, pail, gozvn, pot, bug ; and it is 
argued that when the English conquered the Celts the 



THE MAKING OF THE LANGUAGE 3 1 

latter lived among them only as slaves or wives, and these 
are just the sort of words that would be likely, under 
those circumstances, to creep in. In fact, however, it 
is generally impossible to prove that such words were 
not borrowed by the Celts from the English ; their mere 
presence in two languages proves nothing. Moreover, 
they may have come down in both languages from the 
original Indo-European. The proportion of words that 
can be proved to have come to us from the early Britons 
is infinitesimal. The Celtic languages seem somehow to 
have been made of very perishable stuff, for that spoken 
in Gaul also disappeared almost entirely under the Roman 
rule. 

With Old Norse, the language of the early Danes, the 
case is somewhat different. Several hundred words 
were undoubtedly contributed from this source, and they 
are words which count, for they are of the homely, 
everyday sort. There is, however, great difficulty in 
identifying them. The Danes settled chiefly in the 
north, and the influence of Old Norse was therefore 
exerted chiefly on the northern dialect of Old English. 
Since, therefore, almost all the extant specimens of Old 
English are in West Saxon, it is only in the Middle 
English period, some three centuries or more after their 
introduction, that these words become very conspicuous 
in our literature. Moreover, Old Norse and Old Eng- 
lish were closely related languages, and therefore, when 
we find in a thirteenth-century writer a word that was 
unquestionably good Norse, we cannot always be sure 
that it was not good Old English also ; it may be a mere' 
chance that no early West Saxon writer put it in a book. 



CHAPTER III 

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 

17. Widsith. — About the time of the Norman Con- 
quest, a certain Bishop of Exeter presented to his 
cathedral a valuable collection of manuscript poems, 
all fastened together in the form of one book. This 
collection is still extant under the name of the Exeter 
Book, although it has suffered considerably from water 
and fire, and it is one of our chief sources of information 
about Old English. Concerning some of the poems 
which it contains, we have knowledge from other 
sources also, so that we can name their authors and 
fix their dates ; but many of them are known to us 
solely by their inclusion in this book. 

One of the latter, a poem of 143 lines, begins with 
the words **Wldsl5 ma^olade, wordhord onleac " ; 
that is, ''Widsith spoke, unlocked (his) word-hoard." 
The first word is evidently used as a proper name, but 
it seems to mean ''Wide-way," or (more intelligibly) 
"the far-traveler." After a few introductory lines we 
come to what Widsith said, and the rest of the poem is 
in the first person. It gives a rather unliterary cata- 
logue of persons and places that Widsith has visited. 
Among others, he visited Hermanric, king of the Goths, 
and received hospitable treatment at his hands. Now 
Hermanric, the king of the Ostrogoths, died in 376 ; 

32 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 33 

and the first permanent settlement of the EngUsh in 
England was not till 449. It looks, therefore, as if we 
had in Widsith's song a relic of continental English 
literature. The introductory lines above referred to 
are consistent with this view, for, in giving a brief 
account of Widsith, before the actual unlocking of his 
"word-hoard," they say that he "was born among the 
Myrgings, and for his first journey sought the home of 
the fierce king Hermanric, to the east of Ongle." It 
is hard to say who the Myrgings were, but " Ongle " 
seems to be Anglia, and may well designate the original 
home of the Angles. 

There are, however, difficulties about this explanation. 
Widsith mentions a certain Theodoric, king of the 
Franks, who did not succeed to the throne till 511. It 
is obviously impossible that the same person could visit 
Hermanric and mention Theodoric, and we therefore 
see that the story of Widsith either is fictitious or has 
suffered from late interpolations. 

The latter alternative is easy to accept. The profes- 
sional poets of the early English were wandering min- 
strels, who played their harps and chanted their poems 
in the halls of their entertainers. Their songs were 
sometimes original, sometimes learned from others. If 
we assume that Widsith was a real poet, who achieved 
fame before the English came to England ; that the 
introductory lines of the extant poem are merely a set- 
ting given to one of his songs by a later poet who 
revered his memory ; and that in oral transmission for 
many generations, while the real spirit of the song was 
preserved, it became confused in matters of detail ; if 



34 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

we assume all this, we assume what we cannot prove, 
but all is well within the limits of probability. We 
may at least feel reasonably certain that the nu- 
cleus of Widsith's song is older than the invasion 
of England ; that it is indeed one of the oldest, and 
perhaps the very oldest, of extant specimens of 
English literature. 

The poem itself contains evidence of the mode of life 
of the poet. The introduction tells us that Widsith was 
the greatest of travelers, and that " he often received 
valuable gifts in the hall;" and the body of the poem 
says, '' I was among the Burgundians, where I received 
a bracelet ; there Guthere gave me welcome treasure 
to reward my song; no careless king was he." The 
concluding sentiment comes appropriately from the lips 
of such a man : 

Thus poets wander over the world, 

With songs of grief or grateful praises ; 

And some they see in south or north, 

Lovers of song, largesse-givers, 

Who are willing to win the highest praise 

Above their peers, until all things pass, 

Life and light together : they who love renown 

Have under heaven the highest glory. 

18. Beowulf. — The most important monument of 
Old English literature is Beowulf, an epic poem of 3183 
lines. This, like Widsith, exists in only one manuscript, 
and our knowledge of its origin and history must 
be obtained from internal evidence. The manuscript 
appears to have been written early in the tenth century. 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 35 

The poem itself is certainly much older than that, but it 
is not possible to fix its age exactly. 

Beowulf is the name of the hero, and the epic con- 
tains an account of two periods in his life. The first 
part deals with his fight with a strange monster, Gren- 
del. This creature had been for many years preying 
upon the warriors of the good king Hrothgar, enter- 
ing his hall by night and dragging them away to be 
devoured in the wilderness. Beowulf comes from over 
the sea, undertakes to sleep in the hall, and when Gren- 
del enters grapples with him. Weapons are useless 
against the monster, but Beowulf in the fight tears 
off his arm, and Grendel rushes away to die. After 
rejoicing and thanksgiving, Grendel' s mother appears 
seeking vengeance, and Beowulf's heroism, again put 
to the proof, is again triumphant. The latter part of 
the poem deals with Beowulf in his old age, after he 
has become king in his own land across the sea. A 
fiery dragon is ravaging the land, and the aged warrior 
seeks him in his lair. He kills the dragon, but is 
himself fatally hurt. 

The latter part of the poem is supposed to be based 
upon a solar myth ; in other words, it is thought that 
the fight with the dragon represents the struggle of the 
summer's warmth with the winter's storms, showing how 
summer wins a victory for the moment, but eventually 
passes away. Myths of this character are certainly 
common among primitive peoples, and perhaps they are 
based upon natural phenomena ; but however that may 
be, it seems likely that there is some foundation in fact 
for the story of Beowulf. The most generally accepted 



36 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

theory is that the hero was a real person, and that the 
epic is founded upon his actual deeds. Tradition, of 
course, greatly exaggerated those deeds ; and perhaps 
the exaggerated tales about Beowulf, the slayer of mon- 
sters, became somehow confused in the minds of our 
forefathers with the old allegorical tale about winter and 
summer. Theories of this kind, however, must be re- 
ceived with caution. Scholars sometimes undervalue 
the inventive imagination of our early story-tellers, in 
their eagerness to explain literary phenomena. 

It is impossible to determine where or when the poem 
was composed. It is puzzling to find that Hrothgar's 
home, the scene of the first part, is apparently in Den- 
mark, and that Beowulf's own kingdom is in Sweden. 
There is no mention of England, or the Angles, or the 
Saxons. On the other hand, the epic exists only in 
English, and occasional allusions to the Christian reli- 
gion show that it cannot have taken its present form 
before the seventh century. By that time the English 
were well established in England, and would naturally 
have lost all interest in places so foreign as Denmark 
and Sweden. It is clear that these religious allusions 
must be later interpolations. Perhaps the most plausible 
theory is that the story existed among the English in 
the form of several short poems when they were still on 
the continent, near neighbors of the Danes and Swedes ; 
and that those stories, brought to England by men of 
Widsith's profession, were pieced together at some time 
in the eighth century by some Christian editor. 

19. Beowulf (continued). — Old English verse sounds to 
our ears decidedly uncouth. Poetry was written in lines 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 3/ 

with four accented syllables, and a varying number of 
others. Thus Beowulf begins : 

Hwaet ! we Gar-Dena in gear-dagum 
■Seod-cyninga Srym gefrunon, 

which may be imitated in Modern English as follows : 

Ho ! of the Danes in days of yore 

The. proud princes we have heard the praises. 

One of the first two accented syllables always begins 
with the same sound as one of the last two. This allit- 
eration is often found in three of the syllables, and some- 
times in all four. Modern scholars have found laws 
which regulate the number and position of the unac- 
cented syllables also, but to an unlearned reader they 
look as if they were allowed to come in at random, 
wherever it was convenient. The verse, therefore, often 
does not seem rhythmical at all, and a hasty judgment 
would be that our forefathers had no ear for poetry ; but 
the very fact that these matters are regulated by laws, 
and that those laws are somewhat complicated and hard 
for us to grasp, shows that the early English really did 
enjoy and appreciate their verse in a way in which we 
ourselves are unable to follow them. It is not impossi- 
ble that with the change in our language we have lost 
some part of the language faculty, somewhat as modern 
races in general have lost the classical sense for quan- 
tity ; but it seems more likely that the Old English 
poets fitted their verse somehow to their harp music, 
and it is perhaps because we know so little about their 
music that we are unable fully to understand how their 
verse appealed to them. 



38 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Old English poetry was often formless, inartistic in 
general structure. The story of Beowulf, as a story, 
is not very well told. There are confusing digressions, 
and due proportion is not always observed between the 
important and the unimportant. Everything is rough- 
hewn. The poets were fond of using unfamiliar words 
and strange, heavy phrases, and the lumbering move- 
ment of their verse is thereby made (for our ears) still 
more awkward. Thus the introductory lines of Beo- 
wulf, describing an ancestor of Hrothgar, say : 

He waxed under welkin, throve with worship, 

Until each singly of the near-sitters 
Over the whale-path had to hearken 
And give tribute ; a good king was he. 

The *' near-sitters over the whale-path" are '^neighbors 
over the sea." 

The earliest poets were perhaps at their best in 
certain kinds of description. Here is a part of the 
account of the abode of Grendel and his mother, freely 
paraphrased : 

They dwell in a wilderness by wolves haunted. 
Where the fen-path winds by windy headlands 
And the mountain waterfall is mist-shrouded. 
Not many miles hence the mere standeth. 
There in hoary whiteness forests overhang, 
Leaning over the water with roots interlocked. 
And fires are flaming horridly on the flood, 
A nightly wonder. No man so wise 
Of the sons of our fathers as to fathom that depth. 
The hound-driven hart will not hide his head there, 
But yields life and breath, exhausted, on the brink. 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 39 

The poet was evidently at home in the description of 
wild scenery. Sontetimes he is merely sensational, but 
often his verses have a grandeur and a gloom that are 
legitimately thrilling. The sea was his favorite element, 
— not the smooth, sunshiny surface, but the thunder- 
ing, storm-swept deeps, peopled with strange horrors. 
The blood of the Vikings is in his poetry. 

The ruling sentiments of the poet or poets of Beowulf 
seem to be that glory and honor are the highest good 
possible to man, but that Wyrd (Fate) is the supreme 
arbiter of our destinies, and that we cannot control 
them. When Beowulf goes to meet the dragon in his 
last fight, he says, '' I will not flee one foot before him ; 
yet it shall be decided between us as Wyrd shall allot, 
the supreme god of every man." This is not an orien- 
tal fatalism ; there is no passive recumbency about it ; 
yet its spirit is far from the spirit of Christianity, and 
it is clear that the final editor of Beowulf, while he 
added Christian touches here and there, did not attempt 
to root out the essential paganism of his original. There 
is a high moral spirit in the poem, but the morals are 
those of the pagan warrior hero, not of the cloister. 

One other characteristic picture in the epic must be 
noted. The fight with GrendeFs mother took place at 
the bottom of the horrid pool already described. Beo- 
wulf had said farewell to his friends on the bank and 
plunged in. With grotesque exaggeration we are told 
that it took him nearly a whole day to sink to the 
bottom, and many hours more were consumed before 
he won the victory and swam up to the surface. Mean- 
while his friends, both the Danes with Hrothgar and 



40 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Beowulf's own companions from over the sea, gave him 
up for lost. 

The noon-day came, they quitted the cliff. 
The hasty Danes, and Hrothgar homeward 
Started with them : but the strangers sat 
And gazed heart-sick at the gloomy mere, 
Wishing (not weening) ever to win 
Their dear lord back. 

Here we see that with all the gloom and fierceness 
there is yet room for softer feeling now and then. 
Tennyson's prince might well have had the spirit of 
Beowulf in mind when he sang '^dark and true and 
tender is the north." ^ 

20. Caedmon and Bede. — The earliest English poetry 
by a known author is Caedmon' s, and the earliest prose 
was Bede's. Caedmon died at an advanced age in 680, 
Bede being at the time in his boyhood. This was at 
the time of the Northumbrian kingdom's supremacy, and 
both these writers were Northumbrians. That kingdom 
stood at the head of the Heptarchy in literature and 
learning, as well as in political and military power. 

Caedmon's poetry is nearly all lost, but we know its 
character from Bede's account of it in his Ecclesiastical 
History^ and there are still in existence a few verses 
which are thought to have opened Caedmon's first 
poem. They are substantially as follows : 

Now let us hallow the heaven's warder, 
The Maker's might and the thoughts of his mind, 
The World-father's work, how of all wonders 
The God of Glory made a beginning. 

1 Compare Stopford Brooke, English Literature^ p. i8. 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 4 1 

Caedmon's muse was wholly devoted to religion. He 
composed metrical paraphrases of the scriptural accounts 
of the Creation, the Exodus, the life of Christ, and the 
teaching of the apostles. Poems of this general char- 
acter are still extant, and two in particular, known as 
the Genesis and the Exodus^ were until recently thought 
to be Caedmon's ; but careful study has shown that 
different parts of these poems must have been written 
by different authors, and that very little of them could 
possibly have been written by Caedmon. 

Thus it appears that after the English became thor- 
oughly established in England, there was a sweeping 
change in the spirit of their literature. This was of 
course due to the introduction of Christianity, but more 
especially to the introduction of monastic institutions. 
The time of Caedmon and Bede was just the time when 
the monastic system was most flourishing and pure. 
This was the case everywhere, but perhaps especially 
in England. Many monasteries were founded there in 
the seventh century. As this work was done largely 
by Celtic missionaries from Ireland, it is interesting to 
note that much of the new character in English litera- 
ture and life may reasonably be regarded as springing 
from the seed sown two centuries before by St. 
Patrick. 

In the turbulent dark ages, the monastery was the 
only place where those who loved peace and learning 
could find congenial surroundings. The ideal of the 
monastic system was plain living and high thinking, and 
at this period the ideal was actually realized. In the 
daily routine of monkish labor and devotion there was a 



42 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

refined tranquillity not to be found beyond the monas- 
tery walls. The monks collected and copied manu- 
scripts, wrote the annals of their own societies or of the 
outside world, studied and practiced music, the decora- 
tive arts, medicine, agriculture, architecture ; they were 
missionaries to the secular world not only of religion 
but also of the arts and the practical sciences. Mem- 
bers of different institutions visited one another, and 
thus between parts of England, and between England 
and the continent, there was a free and friendly exchange 
of spiritual and intellectual food. The best youth of 
the time were irresistibly attracted to this life, and thus 
the highest culture and the deepest religion of the time 
were blended together. No wonder that in literature 
the Beowulfian ideal of pagan heroism dwindled some- 
what before the scriptural ideal of Christian piety. 

Csedmon was a servant in the monastery at Whitby ; 
Bede was a monk at Jarrow. Bede was the greatest 
scholar of his time, and his reputation as such was 
world-wide. He was esteemed as master of all learning, 
and scholars came from remote parts of the continent 
to be taught by him. • He wrote of music, rhetoric, 
theology, mathematics, and the applied sciences ; but 
in general his works hardly belong to English literature. 
The monkish language all over the western world was 
Latin, and in that language nearly all Bede's works 
were written. The chief of these is the Ecclesiastical 
History of Britain^ the source of our knowledge of Caed- 
mon, and of much of the history of the English people. 
One of Bede's latest works, however, a translation of 
part of the Gospel of St. John, was written in English 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 43 

for the use of the less learned ; and because of this 
work Bede is sometimes called the ''father of English 
prose." The work, however, is no longer extant, and 
the title is of questionable propriety. 

21. Cynewulf. — In the year 1822 a German scholar, 
traveling in Italy, discovered in a monastery at Vercelli 
a manuscript volume of Old English sermons and poems. 
How it came there is unknown ; but there is nothing 
extraordinary about it, for Vercelli was a common rest- 
ing place for English pilgrims on the way to Rome. 
This volume (commonly known as the Vercelli Book), 
and the Exeter Book, and the Beozvulf manuscript, and 
a manuscript of the Geitesis and the Exodits, contain 
nearly all that remains of Old English poetry. 

Perhaps the best poem in the Vercelli Book is that 
known as the Ele7ie, which describes the finding of the 
true cross by the Empress Helena. The poem begins 
by telling that the Emperor Constantine, on the eve of 
a battle with the Huns and Goths, had a vision of a 
jeweled cross above the clouds, inscribed with the 
words, ''By this sign shalt thou overcome the foe." 
The battle was fought and won, and then Constantine, 
learning for the first time what the cross was, sent his 
mother, Helena, to the Holy Land to seek the true 
original of the symbol. The true cross and the two 
crosses of the thieves were, T^y miraculous guidance, 
found side by side. All three were tested by touching 
a dead body with each in turn, and when at the third 
trial the corpse was brought to life, the empress knew 
that her search was ended. 

Near the end of the Elene the poet gives his own 



44 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

name in a sort of riddling acrostic. He does this by 
the use of certain runes, or letters of the prehistoric 
alphabet of the English people. These letters were 
called by the names of things, each name beginning 
with the sound designated by the corresponding rune ; 
as if, for example, we called the letter "a" apricot, the 
letter ''b" bagpipe, etc. In the passage referred to, 
this poet simply inserts in his poem eight of these runes, 
at intervals, instead of spelling out the words which are 
their names. He is giving an account of himself, and 
he says that even in his prosperous days he was like a 
failing torch (Cen), and that the fall (Yr) ^ of his friends 
brought him to sorrow (Nied) ; and so on in like manner 
until we have spelled out the whole name Cynewulf. 

The poem is certainly one of great merit, and it is 
interesting to have even such scanty knowledge of the 
author and his life as he has chosen to give us. He 
says that in his youth he received rich gifts in the hall 
of his patron ; but sorrow and perhaps poverty came 
upon him, and his heart was turned from the frivolities 
of fashion and sport to the religious life. Accordingly 
in his old age he dedicates his poetic powers to the 
composition of religious poetry. This is the whole 
substance of Cynewulf s autobiography, but there are 
two other long poems on sacred themes which give his 
name in the same riddling way, and we therefore know 
that they were written by the same man. As Cyne- 
wulf says in the Elene that he received gifts in his 

1 The names of some of the runes are uncertain, and consequently 
the precise significance of parts of this passage is disputed. The inter- 
pretation here adopted is given only for the sake of illustration. 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 45 

youth, some scholars have thought that he was a min- 
strel, and that it might be possible to identify some of 
the secular poems which he wrote before his conversion. 
Their efforts have not been attended by much success. 
The most important work which has in this way been 
ascribed to Cynewulf's youth is a collection of riddles 
in the Exeter Book, but the evidence connecting these 
with him seems very shadowy ; indeed it is probable 
that the gifts which Cynewulf says he received were 
given him for his services as a warrior, not as a poet. 
There is enough, however, in both quantity and merit, 
of the unquestionably genuine work of Cynewulf to 
assure him the distinction of being the best of the Old 
English poets of whose personality we have any knowl- 
edge. From linguistic evidence it appears that he lived 
about the end of the eighth century and the beginning of 
the ninth, and it is pretty clear that he was an inhabitant 
of the kingdom of Mercia. This was the southernmost 
of the two great Anglian kingdoms in the Heptarchy, 
and it enjoyed a brief period of overlordship between 
the supremacy of Northumberland and that of Wessex. 
It seems, therefore, that in Mercia, as in Northumber- 
land, political and literary greatness went nearly hand 
in hand. 

The religious fervor of Cynewulf's poetry is unques- 
tionable, but the inherited English love of fighting, either 
with men or with the elements, is perhaps more marked. 
One of the best passages in the Elene is the account of 
the empress's voyage. There the description of the 
swelling of the sails and the buffeting of the waves 
shows that Christianized England had not yet forgotten 



46 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

its pagan instincts. A curious illustration of this is a 
passage near the beginning descriptive of the battle. 
Cynewulf's model, a Latin version of the story, barely 
states the fact of the victory, but the English poet's 
expansion of the theme shows that to him this was the 
most congenial of topics. Here is a sentence from the 
original : 

And he fell upon the barbarians with his army, and began 
slaughtering them at the break of day ; and the barbarians 
were panic-stricken, and took to flight along the banks of 
the Danube, and a considerable multitude of them died. 

The following is a free paraphrase of the corresponding 
passage in Cynewulf : 

Trumpets resounded before the troop. 

The raven was watching and waiting joyfully. 

The dewy-winged eagle saw from the distance, 

And the wolf from his haunt in the desolate wood 

Howled at the terror of death and hate. 

Arrows rained on them as they rushed together ; 

Shields were broken, javelins shattered. 

And the sword that swayed with the swinging arm 

Came crashing down on the death-doomed foe. 

They pressed on resolutely, pushing with effort. 

Thrusting with swords and swinging battle-axes, 

And ever their banner was borne forward 

With shouts of triumph that were loud and shrill, 

As the heathen fell joyless on that field. 

Hastily the host of Huns fled away 

When the Roman king, the fighter unconquerable. 

The fierce leader, lifted the cross. 

Wide was the ruin that was wrought on the heathen. 

Some perished there in that place of death, 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 47 

Some fled half alive to rocky fastnesses, 

And won their way back to Danube's banks ; 

And some found death in the depths of the lake-stream. 

But the proud victors chased the vanquished 

From the day's dawning till night came down, 

And with ash-darts and arrows, (fierce battle-adders). 

They destroyed the hateful host o^ the enemy. 

22. Judith. — In the same manuscript which contains 
Beowulf, there is found a fragment, in 350 lines, of a 
poem based on the apocryphal Book of Judith. It 
tells, with some departures from the original narrative, 
how the Hebrew maiden cut off the head of Nebu- 
chadnezzar's general, Holof ernes, while he was in a 
drunken sleep, and then aroused the Israelites to attack 
and rout the Assyrian army. The religious spirit is 
dominant in the piece, sometimes running to absurdity, 
as where the Jewess is made to pray to the Saviour and 
to the Holy Trinity ; but there is also present a martial 
spirit which, as in the Ele^ie, reminds us quite as much 
of paganism as of Christianity. The poet exults in the 
deed of Judith and in those of her warrior compatriots, 
not merely with religious fervor but also, it seems, with 
a half barbaric delight in battle for its own sake. The 
Almighty is not only God of Mercy, but also " God of 
Hosts," " Dispenser of Glory," " Splendor of Kings." 
This same mixed character, indeed, is found in a great 
deal of the religious poetry of the early English. It 
should be remembered that even Beowulf, in which the 
paganism is almost undiluted, was perhaps written, and 
pretty certainly rewritten, long after the monkish period 
began. Whatever may have been the spirit within the 



,48 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

monastery walls, outsiders were not completely won over 
to the Gospel of Peace. 

Inasmuch as different dialects were spoken in different 
parts of England, and as all the dialects were suffering 
continuous change and development, it would seem that 
scholars should always be able to tell, by linguistic evi- 
dence, where and when a particular book was written. 
The difficulty of doing this, however, is very great. In 
the first .place, when a southern monk or other scribe 
copied a northern work, he would modify its language 
according to his own standard of correctness. When, 
therefore, we have an anonymous work existing in only 
a single manuscript, it is next to impossible to say in 
what dialect it was originally written. It will be remem- 
bered that Wessex was the last of the kingdoms to be 
supreme in the Heptarchy. Now this supremacy, as in 
the case of Northumberland and Mercia, was in literature 
and learning as well as in political power. Northern 
learning disappeared before the encroachments of the 
Danes, and we have very little left of the northern liter- 
ature except what the literary men of the later period 
saw fit to copy and preserve. Consequently the great 
bulk of Old English literature, whatever its original form, 
is preserved to us only in the West Saxon dress. 

The date and origin of Wi^ Judith are utterly unknown. 
One of the most eminent of Old English scholars thinks 
it was by a Northumbrian poet of about Bede's time ; 
another thinks it was written more than a century later 
in Wessex. The latter hypothesis is supported by the 
fact that there was a Judith who was the consort of a 
West Saxon king, Alfred the Great's father. It is a 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 49 

plausible conjecture that the poem is a tribute to her, 
and that its jubilant account of the rout of the Assyrians 
is an indirect celebration of some great victory over the 
Danes. This conjecture, however, seems incapable of 
proof. 

23. JElfred and the Later Literature. — The title " Father 
of English prose" is more justly given to King Alfred 
than to Bede. Bede's translation of St. John is lost, 
while voluminous works of Alfred are still extant. In 
his literary work, as well as in his political and military 
rule, Alfred justifies the name of "the Great." Not 
that he was in the ordinary sense a great writer ; but we 
find that with a wisdom beyond his generation he labored 
for the education and moral guidance of his subjects, as 
well as for their material prosperity. One of the evils of 
the monastic system was that it tended to confine litera- 
ture to the Latin language, and so, while advancing the 
cause of learning, did little to extend it outside of a select 
circle. yElfred was in full sympathy with the highest 
interests of the monks, and gave them valuable assistance 
and protection ; but he also earnestly desired that the 
best thought of the time should be brought within reach 
of the unlearned. To this end he translated into English 
several standard works on history, science, and philoso- 
phy ; and he saw to it that other work of the sort was 
done by other hands. 

Among the works translated by Alfred were the 
Historia adversus Paganos of Orosius, a Spaniard ; the 
Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede, the Englishman ; and 
the De Consolatione PhilosopJiiae of Boethius, a Roman. 
The last-named is the most celebrated of the books that 



50 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

yElfred translated. The original was written in the sixth 
century by one who is sometimes called " the last of 
the Romans." The book was the last important work 
of genius produced by pagan Rome. It is said to have 
been written in prison, where Boethius was confined on 
account of political animosities. It is as purely pagan a 
work as the De Senectute ; though in another and looser 
sense it may be called, like Cicero's treatise, fairly Chris- 
tian in spirit. Its posthumous history was remarkable, 
for throughout the middle ages it was regarded as a 
manual of religious philosophy, and its author was 
supposed to have been a devout Christian. It was 
frequently translated, and was in high repute as late 
as the seventeenth century. 

^Elfred's labors were a lasting benefit to England. 
The most prosperous period of Old English history was 
in the century following his death, and the literature 
of that period is abundant. The literary traditions of 
Wessex, dating from Alfred's time, survived till the 
Norman Conquest, though sometimes interrupted by the 
later Danish wars. The literature of this period was 
mostly of a religious tenor, and it indicates that England 
under the West Saxon kings was a civilized country in 
which the best men's standards of morality were like 
our own. Their literary art seems of an inferior order 
when we compare it with the best product of modern 
times ; but indeed literary art was not what they were 
seeking especially to cultivate. Sermons were written, 
and lives of saints, and school books, and (most impor- 
tant of all) the English Chronicle, a record of contempo- 
rary events, begun before .^Elfred's reign and continued 



OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE 5 I 

from time to time by a long series of writers down to the 
year 1154. Some parts of this work are very prosy 
annals, but others are real literature, and occasionally 
the anonymous chronicler breaks into verse. One pas- 
sage of poetry celebrating the victory at Brunanburh 
in 937 has all the spirit and fire of the Viking days. 
Tennyson was sufficiently interested to translate it, and 
the merits of his Battle of Brunanburh are substantially 
those of the original. 

The English Chronicle nearly bridges the gap between 
the Old and the Middle English literatures. The most 
barren period in our whole literary history was the cen- 
tury and a half following the Norman Conquest. Most 
of the high places in both church and state were occupied 
by Normans. The common monk and the parish priest 
were perhaps English, but their abbot and bishop spoke 
French. There are shocking stories in the Chronicle of 
the oppression of the subject race — stories of torture, 
starvation, robbery, and enslavement. The history of the 
English during this period was of course not wholly one 
of misery, but there was enough of it in their lot to 
prevent the growth of anything that can fairly be called 
literature. Whatever was written for the entertainment 
of the ruling classes was written in French, and some of 
the best French literature of the twelfth century was 
produced on English soil. Treatises addressed primarily 
to the learned were written in Latin. Those who wrote 
English did so either because they could write nothing 
else, or because those whom they wished to reach could 
read nothing else ; and nearly all that has come down to 
us from this period is of a religious and didactic character. 



52 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Doubtless there were other kinds of work done. The 
wandering minstrel continued to go his rounds, and a 
great deal of secular poetry may have been composed by 
him, if not by others also ; but this kind of verse had little 
chance of preservation. In the first place, it was likely 
not to be written down at all, for there was little advan- 
tage in writing it ; and in the second place, while the 
monasteries were not the only places where poetry was 
composed, they were the places where manuscripts were 
most likely to be cared for. Whatever the inmates of a 
monastery or other clerical institution thought fit to copy 
and keep in their library had a slight chance of surviving 
the middle ages ; other things had in general no chance 
at all. Furthermore, we know of instances of the wan- 
ton destruction of Old English manuscripts by Norman 
monks. They could not read them, and by erasing the 
words they could make the parchments available for 
their own use. It is clear, therefore, that our knowledge 
of the Old English literature in general must be very 
defective ; but that we know even less of the secular 
literature than of the religious. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 

24. Asceticism. — The period of mediaeval romance ex- 
tends from the eleventh well into the fifteenth century, 
but romances written in the latter part of this period 
were mere survivals of an almost extinct fashion. It 
will be most convenient, therefore, to consider this whole 
species of literature in a single chapter, and to return 
afterwards to the strict chronological order of our history. 
As, however, the romance of chivalry was the product 
of a peculiar state of society, it will be necessary to con- 
sider incidentally some aspects of mediaeval life ; and the 
ascetic element in mediaeval religion may conveniently 
be considered in advance. 

Self-denial was the first rule of the monastic orders, 
and a prominent feature of mediaeval religious observance 
in general. Asceticism was, however, by no means a 
peculiarly mediaeval institution. Sects of heathen philos- 
ophers, many centuries before the time of Christ, had 
advocated various forms of self-denial, such as celibacy, 
total abstinence, etc. ; and the same sort of teaching is 
found in some of the later Jewish scriptures. There was 
in general, however, this difference between the pagan 
and the Christian ascetics ; that the former advocated 
self-denial for ethical, the latter for religious, purposes. 
The Greek philosophers thought that by thwarting the 

53 



54 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

natural promptings of the flesh they could attain to per- 
fect virtue ; the recluse of the monastic period turned a 
deaf ear to the voices of the flesh and the world in order 
to hear more distinctly the voice of God speaking within 
his own soul. Many a holy man, after wasting his body 
with fasting and pain, had half-feverish visions of the 
other world, and felt himself inspired to utter prophecies 
and to perform miracles. Many of the saints of the 
church had experiences of this sort, and their lives swell 
the literature of the middle ages. 

An excellent illustration of mediaeval asceticism is 
found in the legendary Life of St. Alexis. This work 
must have been very popular throughout the later middle 
ages, for it is still extant in several languages, and in 
versions dating from the eleventh century on. One 
manuscript gives the story (in fourteenth-century Eng- 
lish) substantially as follows : 

Sit still and I will tell you the story of a holy man : 
Alexis was his name. His father was Eufemian, a great 
and good lord in Rome. This lord and his pious wife used 
to give generously to the poor, never sitting down to their 
own food till all who came to their door for charity had 
first been satisfied. For a long time this pair were child- 
less, but at length a son, Alexis, was sent them in response 
to their prayers. He grew up holy and wise, and dear to 
all hearts. His parents arranged a most advantageous 
marriage for him, but Alexis was so wholly given to reli- 
gion that he regarded the happiness of wedded life with 
horror. Immediately after the ceremony, therefore, he fled 
from home alone, without giving any intimation as to where 
he was going. Coming at length to a city in Syria, he 
gave away all his money and the best of his attire, and sat 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 55 

down at a church door in common beggar's garb, resolved 
to live on the alms of casual givers. Every one supposed 
him to be an ordinary mendicant. 

Meantime the parents and the wife of Alexis were in the 
depths of grief. His mother said "Alas, alas!", and his 
wife made moan like a dove that has lost her mate. They 
sent messengers to all parts of the world to find him, and 
it chanced that some of these messengers came to the very 
place where he was. They saw him sitting in the poor 
men's row, but as they could not recognize him they gave 
him alms and passed by. He thanked God that it was 
permitted him to receive charity from those who had once 
been his inferiors, but he did not betray himself to them ; 
and so they returned to the bereaved family and reported 
that Alexis could not be found. He, meanwhile, remained 
at his post by the church door in the Syrian city, humbly 
rejoicing in his own sufferings. 

After this manner of life had continued for seventeen 
years, an image of the Virgin, which stood inside the 
church, spoke to the church-warden and commanded him 
to bring inside the holy man who had sat so long at the door. 
Alexis accordingly was brought to live inside the edifice, 
and great honor was shown him because of his long life of 
poverty. His holy nature, how^ever, would not permit him 
to be the recipient of such attentions (even at the miracu- 
lous bidding of the sacred image), so he fled again in search 
of a land where he might pursue his course of religious 
mendicancy unnoticed. Taking ship, he was driven by 
adverse winds to Rome, his old home. Recognizing that 
it was the will of God that had brought him hither, he 
resolved to go to his father's house ; but he presented him- 
self there not as the returned son, but still in the character 
of a poor beggar. His father received him, without recog- 
nizing him, and gave him a place among the recipients of 
his bounty; and there Alexis passed another seventeen 
years. 



56 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Nou Alex, as ^e ^ habbej? ^ i-herd, 
is dweld in his fader 3erd 

as a pore man. 
In preyere of fasting & waking, 
he seruede lesu, heuene kyng, 

in al fat he can. 
Seruant3 fat were proute & 3ungge 
him dryuen ofte to hef ingge ^ 

as he 3ede ^ vp & doun ; 
& ofte-sithes ^ brof of ffisches, 
& water as he ^ wessch here dissches, 

pei caste vpon his croun. 
Of al fe schame fat fei him wrou3the 
he fonkede lesu, fat him bouthe,"^ 

& 3af ^ him my3tte f erto ; 
he was f olemod ^ in alle f inge, 
fer-out ne my3tte no man him bringe, 

ffor nowth ^^ f ei couden do. 

When Alexis felt that death was near, he wrote a full 
account of his life, and then died in his humble cot, with 
his manuscript clasped in his hand. A voice from heaven 
bade the people seek the holy man in Eufemian's house, 
and the Emperor, the Pope, and a great crowd of others 
came to the place where Alexis lay dead. Several persons 
tried to take the manuscript, but the dead hand would not 
let go till the Pope himself made the attempt. Then it 

1 The character 3 has three uses. At the beginning of a word it 
represents the sound of consonantal y, in the middle of a word that of 
a strongly aspirated h^ or gh^ and at the end that of s or z. Thus 3e is 
equivalent to ye, wrou3the to wrought, and seruant3 to servants. The 
initial 3 is really a softened g. The Old English form for 3e was ge ; 
xor 3ede, ge-eode, etc. 

2 The character J> represents the sound of th^ and is used in some 
manuscripts interchangeably with ^. 

3 mockery. * went. ^ oftentimes. ^ they. "^ bought. 
■ gave. ^ meek. ^^ aught. 



'1 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY ^ 5/ 

readily relinquished it. The beggar's identity was estab- 
lished. The parents and the widow (faithful for thirty-four 
years) made bitter lamentation, but all marveled at the 
extraordinary holiness of the deceased. Whoever touched 
the body, whether sick, halt, or blind, was straightway made 
whole. A tomb of gold and precious stones was reared, 
and pilgrims thronged to the place forever after, for the 
sake of the miraculous cures wrought there. 

To a certain extent the ascetic mind found compensa- 
tion for its renunciation of earthly pleasures in a pecu- 
liarly impassioned religious mysticism. The anchoress, 
in her solitary cell, had visions of the heavenly Bride- 
groom, whose spiritual visitations instilled in her soul a 
love deeper than that of the flesh, which she had abjured. 
The monk, in addressing hymns of fervent adoration to 
the Virgin, appeased a craving for which the worship of 
the Holy Trinity could not suffice. 

O quam sancta, quam serena, 
quam benigna, quam amoena, 

esse virgo creditur: 
per quam servitus finitur, 
porta coeli aperitur, 

et libertas redditur. 

Scores of hymns of this character have come down to 
us from the middle ages. Many of them are mere exer- 
cises in ingenious phrase-turning, but some show real 
warmth of feeling ; and wherever this is present, it may 
fairly be regarded as a sort of by-product of asceticism. 
25. Geoffrey and the French Romances. — In the early 
part of the twelfth century long narrative poems were 
very common in French literature. They told of the 



58 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

chivalrous deeds of brave knights, and their heroes were 
usually borrowed from legends either of the Trojan war, 
or of the wars of Alexander the Great, or of the court of 
Charlemagne. It was the development of the feudal 
system that first made these romances the fashion. 
Under the centrifugal operation of this system, already 
described, there came into being in France a large class 
of wealthy and powerful barons who, with their vassal 
knights, lived in comparative isolation and independence. 
The romances of chivalry presented a poetic and highly 
idealized picture of the kind of life that these men led. 
Hector, Alexander, Charlemagne, and their friends and 
their foes, were represented as knights of the era of 
feudalism, performing impossible tasks with superhuman 
valor. 

About the year 1 140 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in 
Latin his celebrated History of the Britons {Historia 
Britomim). This was an almost wholly mythical account 
of the early Celtic inhabitants of Britain. It began with 
Brut, a great-grandson of -^neas, the supposed founder 
of the supposed British kingdom, and ran through the 
almost interminable line of his fabulous descendants. 
Among these were many who have since become well 
known to literature, such as Cymbeline and Tear ; but 
the greatest figure of all was King Arthur. The pre- 
cise sources from which Geoffrey drew his stories of 
Arthur are still partly in dispute, but he must have been 
partly indebted to traditions picked up among his Welsh 
neighbors. They still cherished the memory of the great 
sixth-century hero. 

As soon as Geoffrey's book was known, Arthur became 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 59 

the favorite hero not of the Welsh only, nor indeed of the 
Celts, but of all literary Europe. His character, as the 
Celtic imagination had devised it, was in some respects 
better suited to the romancer's needs than any of the 
heroes already familiar ; and the latter, moreover, were 
getting worn out. So it came about that romances in 
prose and verse, celebrating the deeds of Arthur and his 
mythical knights, were composed without number. The 
first work was done in French, and therefore in one 
sense does not belong to the history of our literature ; 
but the later English romances were imitations of the 
French, and the joint history of romance in the two 
languages is best regarded as one subject. 

The most illustrious of the French Arthurian poets 
was Chrestien of Troyes. One of his romances, the 
Conte de la Charrette (Tale of the Car), written about 
1 1 70, demands attention as the first example of a pecu- 
liar sort of love story which afterwards became very 
common. The essentials of the tale are as follows : 

Guinevere, King Arthur's queen, was taken captive by 
the fierce Meliagraunce, a treacherous knight who lived in 
a distant castle. Lancelot, who was the king's most gal- 
lant knight, but also secretly the lover of his queen, rode 
furiously in pursuit. Losing his horse, he was offered a 
car to ride in ; but the car was of the kind used for the 
meanest of criminals — a sort of movable stocks. Lance- 
lot hesitated for just one second, but then accepted the 
conveyance. After a series of extraordinary adventures he 
reached the castle and fought with Meliagraunce. Lance- 
lot was getting the worst of the combat, owing to fatigue 
and wounds previously received, when a maiden called his 
attention to Guinevere in a window, hoping thus to cheer 



6o EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

him to renewed effort The effect was not what she ex- 
pected, for Lancelot was unable to keep his eyes on his 
enemy, and so struck wildly ; but the maiden told him to 
stand with Meliagraunce between himself and the window, 
so that he might watch him and Guinevere at the same 
time, and by this device he was able to win the victory. 
After the combat he found Guinevere in the castle, but she 
turned her back abruptly and left the room. Lancelot 
languished in despair, ignorant of the cause of his lady's 
displeasure, but knowing that he must have been guilty of 
some heinous fault. A report spread that he had died, and 
Guinevere gave herself up to secret sorrow, resolving to 
starve to death. Lancelot appeared again, and Guinevere 
this time deigned to explain her ill-treatment of him. She 
had heard that when the car was offered to him he had 
hesitated for a second, weighing the indignity for that 
length of time against the pain of losing her. Lancelot 
most humbly admitted the grievousness of his fault, and 
prayed for forgiveness, which the queen was graciously 
pleased to grant. 

This story is in many ways a typical illustration of the 
romance of chivalry, and the sentiments implied in it 
should be carefully noted. In the first place, love, which 
offers the central interest in poems of this class, is of the 
furtive, forbidden sort. The love of husband and wife, 
or even of persons who might just as well become hus- 
band and wife, was no theme for a poet of this school. 
Such love was not love at all, as he understood it. True 
love requires that the lover should be always in doubt of 
his success, or in fear of his lady's withdrawal of favor ; 
and calm marital possession would of course make this 
impossible. The lover must always be in a trembling, 
timorous attitude before his lady ; he is literally her 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 6l 

servant, as he is often called, and she is all whim and 
caprice. In addition to the love story, these romances 
of course abound in exciting adventures, but the lover's 
gallant deeds are all for love. His heart is set on prov- 
ing by his prowess that he is worthy of love's rewards. 
The very word " gallantry " shows how inextricably blent 
were the ideas of love and valor ; for the two senses 
which it now bears were in the middle ages felt as one. 

26. The Holy Grail. — Not long after Chrestien had 
elaborated his extraordinary tissue of fancy, some of his 
younger contemporaries ^ took up the Arthurian legend 
and gave it a very different turn. Who they were it is 
impossible to say, for as to the authorship of many of 
these romances evidence is either conflicting or wholly 
wanting. The change wrought in the spirit of the Arthur 
legend was the introduction of a moral element, and this 
was done by the invention of a new episode, the Quest 
of the Holy Grail. The Grail, or Graal, was the vessel 
from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, and in 
which Joseph of Arimathea received some of the sacred 
blood at the crucifixion. Joseph brought it with him, 
according to an old church legend, to Britain, and there 
it was kept for a long time ; but it was finally lost, and 
none had been able to find it. Now it occurred to some 
of the early romancers that this legend might well be 
connected with the court of King Arthur, and this was 
done by representing the knights of his celebrated Round 
Table as uniting in a vow to search for the Grail until 
it should be found again. The following extracts from 

1 The innovation is often credited to Walter Map, who was a few 
years older than Chrestien. 



62 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Malory's fifteenth-century version of the story will illus- 
trate the trend of the new idea. His account is based 
upon the earlier French romances, and is better than any 
literal translation could be. 

And thenne the kynge and al estates wente home unto 
Camelot, and soo wente to evensonge to the grete mynster ; 
and soo after upon that to souper, and every knyght sette 
in his owne place as they were to fore hand. Thenne 
anone they herd crakynge and cryenge of thonder that hem 
thought the place shold alle to dryve. In the myddes of 
this blast entred a sonne beaume more clerer by seven 
tymes than ever they sawe daye, and al they were alyghted 
of the grace of the Holy Ghoost. Thenne beganne every 
knyghte to behold other, and eyther sawe other by theire 
semynge fayrer than ever they sawe afore. Not for thenne 
there was no knyght myghte speke one word a grete whyle, 
and soo they loked every man on other, as they had ben 
dome. Thenne ther entred in to the halle the Holy Graile 
coverd with whyte samyte, but ther was none myghte see 
hit, nor who bare hit. And there was al the halle ful- 
fylled with good odoures, and every knyght had suche 
metes and drynkes as he best loved in this world. And 
whan the Holy Grayle had be borne thurgh the halle, 
thenne the holy vessel departed sodenly, that they wyste 
not where hit becam. Thenne had they alle brethe to 
speke ; and thenne the kynge yelded thankynges to God of 
his good grace that he had sente them. ** Certes," said the 
kynge, '^we oughte to thanke oure Lord Jhesu gretely for 
that he hath shewed us this daye atte reverence of this 
hyhe feest of Pentecost." "Now," said Sir Gawayn, "we 
have ben served this daye of what metes and drynkes we 
thoughte on, but one thynge begyled us ; we myght not 
see the Holy Grayle, it was soo precyously coverd : wher- 
for I wil make here avowe, that to morne, withoute lenger 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 63 

abydyng, I shall laboure in the quest of the Sancgreal ; 
that I shalle hold me oute a twelve moneth and a day or 
more yf nede be, and never shalle I retorne ageyne unto 
the courte tyl I have sene hit more openly than hit hath 
ben sene here. And yf I may not spede, I shall retorne 
ageyne as he that maye not be ageynst the wil of our Lord 
Jhesu Cryste." Whan they of the Table Round herde Syr 
Gawayne saye so, they arose up the most party and maade 
suche avowes as Sire Gawayne had made. 

Some of the knights succeeded in the quest, and some 
failed, each faring according to his deserts ; but Lance- 
lot, the brave knight, false friend, and faithful lover, both 
succeeded and failed. Coming to a strange castle he 
heard a voice telling him to enter, and he should see a 
great part of his desire ; so he entered and found within 
a chamber whereof the door was shut and locked. 

Thenne he lystned, and herd a voyce whiche sange so 
swetely that it semed none erthely thynge ; and hym 
thoughte the voyce said, " Joye and honour be to the 
Fader of Heven." Thenne Lancelot kneled doun to fore 
the chamber, for wel wyst he that there was the Sancgreal 
within that chamber. Thenne sayd he, ^' Fair swete Fader 
Jhesu Cryst, yf ever I dyd thyng that pleasyd the Lord, 
for thy pyte ne have me not in despyte for my synnes done 
afore tyme, and that thou shewe me some thynge of that I 
seke." And with that he sawe the chamber dore open, 
and there came oute a grete clerenes, that the hows was as 
bryghte as all the torches of the world had ben there. So 
cam he to the chamber dore, and wold have entryd. And 
anone a voyce said to hym, " Flee, Launcelot, and entre not, 
for thou oughtest not to doo hit ; and yf thou entre thou 
shalt forthynke hit." Thenne he withdrewe hym abak 
ryght hevy. Thenne loked he up in the myddes of the 



64 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

chamber, and sawe a table of sylver, and the holy vessel 
coverd with reed samyte, and many angels' aboute hit, 
wherof one helde a candel of waxe brennyng, and the other 
held a crosse and the ornementys of an aulter. . . . Ryghte 
soo entryd he in to the chamber, and cam toward the table 
of sylver, and whanne he came nyghe he felte a brethe that 
hym thoughte hit was entremedled with fyre, whiche smote 
hym so sore in the vysage that hym thoughte it brente his 
vysage ; and there with he felle to the erthe, and had no 
power to aryse, as he that was soo araged that had loste 
the power of his body, and his herynge, and his seynge. 
Thenne felte he many handes aboute him, whiche tooke 
hym up and bare hym oute of the chamber dore, withoute 
ony amendynge of his swoune, and lefte hym there semyng 
dede to al peple. 

From the two kinds of specimens which have been 
given, it is clear that the nature of the mediaeval romance 
was very complex. It cannot be described in a single 
phrase. We sometimes think of " the age of chivalry " 
as a time when the weaker sex was especially revered by 
the stronger, and pure love was the chief incentive of 
noble ambition ; but such romances as the Conte de la 
Charrette reveal a notion of love not merely artificial to 
the verge of absurdity, but at bottom profoundly immoral. 
On the other hand, it will not do to dismiss the whole 
romantic idea (as some are tempted to do) as a high- 
fantastical fabrication, having no relation to the soberer 
feelings of the time. Such a conception seems to melt 
away as the Grail romances are studied. The fact is 
that the mediaeval romances were written by many 
different men, and though they are much alike in some 
of their romantic peculiarities, they exhibit very different 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 65 

attitudes toward life. The artificial fashion of chivalrous 
love was introduced by men whose immediate ambition 
was to be read by *^ society." Now in the twelfth cen- 
tury, society, in our sense of the word, was just beginning 
to exist. The ladies of the courts of Europe, disciples 
of Queen Eleanor or the Countess Marie of Champagne, 
were willing enough to be flattered, and a good way for 
Chrestien of Troyes to flatter them was by inventing a 
world of fiction in which the most valiant knights were 
as slaves at the feet of capricious ladies ; but neither the 
poet's own instincts nor the tastes of his fair readers 
made it necessary that he should import into his poem a 
morality more rigid than that of real life. On the other 
hand, some of the romances were written by men of 
genuine religious feeling. They were probably men who 
belonged to the secular world, yet the ideals of the cloister 
had made a profound impression on them. Such a char- 
acter as St. Alexis, for example, might seem to them by 
no means exemplary, yet they would find in him some- 
thing that they could not but venerate. When they 
invented the character of Sir Galahad, the virgin knight 
whose heart was as pure as his arm was strong, and who 
alone succeeded in a perfect achievement of the quest, 
they were effecting a compromise between the ascetic 
ideal of the church and the common-sense ideal of the 
average sturdy layman ; and, moreover, they were losing 
none of the literary possibilities of chivalry. Their work 
does in fact present to us, in poetical form, the highest 
ideal of some of the most serious men of the middle ages. 
27. Layamon and the English Romances. — One of the 
French books based on Geoffrey's History was Wace's 



66 



EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Bru^, a versified narrative of the same series of events. 
It was perhaps more from this than from the Histo7da 
Britonum itself that the succeeding romancers learned 
what Geoffrey had to tell them ; but they doubtless had 
divers other authorities also, whom it is impossible now 
to identify. Wace's poem, of course, owed its name to 
the mythical ancestor of the British kings. 

About the year 1205 an English Brut was written. 
This was the work of Layamon, a parish priest of Ernley 
in Worcestershire. The opening lines give us the best 
information we have about him. Their metre should be 
noted. It is a relic of the Old English verse, each half- 
line (or each line, as here printed) containing two princi- 
pal accents, and being more or less closely connected 
with its fellow. The poet, however, often omitted the 
alliteration ; and the scribe, who attempted by marks of 
punctuation to show which half-lines belonged together, 
seems in consequence to have sometimes lost his way.^ 



An preost wes on leoden : 
la3amon wes ihoten. 
he wes leouena'Ses sone : 
li^e him beo drihten. 
5 he wonede at ernle3e : 
at ae'Selen are chirechen. 
vppen seuarne sta}>e : 
sel )?ar him J^uhte. 
on fest Radestone : 
10 }jer he bock radde. 

Hit com him on mode : 
& on his mern }?onke. 



A priest was among the people 
Who was called Layamon. 
He was Levenath's son : 
Gracious to him be the Lord. 
He dwelt at Ernly, 
At a noble church 
Upon Severn's bank, 
(Well there to him it seemed), 
Fast by Radestone. 
There he read books. 
It came to him in mind, 
And in his chief thought, 



1 In the manuscript all the lines are run together, like prose. The 
scribe's punctuation is reproduced in the following extract. Note also 
the equivalence of "S and }?, as, for example, in lines 4 and 48. 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 



67 



)?et he wolde of engle : 

|?a ae^elasn tellen. 
15 wat heo ihoten weoren : 

& wonene heo comen. 

l?a englene londe : 

aerest ahten. 

aefter j^an flode : 
20 >e from drihtene com. 

j?e al her aquelde : 

quic \>2X he funde. 

buten noe & sem : 

japhet & cham. 
25 & heore four wiues: 

J^e mid heom weren on archen. 

la3amon gon li^en : 

wide 3ond >as leode. 

«&: biwon ]?a ae'Sela boc : 
30 \>2i he to bisne nom. 

he nom }?a.englisca boc : 

}?a makede seint Beda. 

an o)?er he nom on latin : 

)?e makede seinte albin. 
35 & >e feire austin : 

}>e fulluht broute hider in. 

boc he nom J^e }?ridde : 

leide }?er amidden. 

)?a makede a frenchis clerc : 
40 wace wes ihoten : 

]?e wel couJ?e writen. 

& he hoe 3ef ]?are 3e]?elen : 

ahenor J?e wes henries quene : 

}?es he3es kinges. 
45 la3amon leide J^eos boc : 

& l^a leaf wende. 

he heom leofliche biheold. 

li}?e him beo drihten. 

fej^eren he nom mid fingren : 
50 & fiede on boc felle : 

«& ba so})e word : 

sette to gadere. 



That he would of the English 

The noble lineage tell ; 

What they were named 

And whence they came, 

Who English land 

First owned 

After the flood 

Which came from the Lord, 

Which quelled all here 

That it found alive, 

Except Noah and Shem, 

Japhet and Ham, 

And their four wives 

Who with them were in the ark. 

Layamon began to travel 

Far among this people, 

And obtained the noble books 

Which he for pattern took. 

He took the English book 

Which Saint Bede made ; 

Another he took in Latin, 

Which Saint Albin made, 

And the fair Austin 

Who brought baptism in hither. 

The third book he took ; 

Laid it there in the midst ; 

Which a French scholar made ; 

Wace he was called. 

He could wTite well, 

And he gave it to the noble 

Eleanor who was queen of Henry 

The high king. 

Layamon laid down these books 

And turned the leaves. 

He beheld them lovingly : 

Gracious be the Lord to him. 

A pen he took with fingers, 

And wrote on book-skin, 

And the true words 

He set together. 



6S 



EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



& )?a ]pre boc : 
]?rumde to are. 

55 Nu bidde'S la3amon 
alcne ae]?ele mon : 
for \>ene almiten godd. 
\>et beos boc rede : 
& leornia J^eos runan. 

60 |?at he J^eos so^feste word : 
segge to sumne. 
for his fader saule : 
\>2i hine for'S brouhte. 
& for his moder saule : 

65 i?a hine to monne iber. 
& for his awene saule : 
J)at hire \>e selre beo. 

Amen. 



And the three books 
Compressed to one. 
Now prayeth Layamon 
To every upright man 
(For the sake of the Almighty God) 
That reads this book 
And learns this teaching, 
That he these solemn words 
Say together : — 
For his father's soul 
That brought him forth, 
And for his mother's soul 
That bore him to man. 
And for his own soul, 
That with it the better it may be. 

Amen. 



Of the three authorities mentioned by Layamon, it is 
evident that he rehed chiefly upon Wace ; but Layamon' s 
poem, which contains 32,250 hnes, is more than twice 
as long as Wace's ^n//, and we cannot always discover 
any specific authority for the new material. Probably 
Layamon's nearness to the Welsh border afforded him 
the same opportunity that Geoffrey had enjoyed, of 
first-hand acquaintance with the Welsh legends ; but 
it is also not unlikely that much of his narrative is of 
his own invention. He professes to be a historian, but 
in the mediaeval mind the notions of history and romance 
were curiously blended ; and therefore when we find 
Layamon mentioning Bede and Wace in the same 
breath, as equally authoritative, we need not be sur- 
prised if we also find that he regards the authority of 
neither as binding. 

The intrinsic literary merits of Layamon's Briil are 
not inconsiderable, but the work is important chiefly 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 69 

because of its historical position. It marks the begin- 
ning of Middle English literature. Before it, as we have 
seen, there had for a long time been nothing of impor- 
tance except devotional works. The Brut itself is 
closer to the Old English in language and metrical 
form than to the modern ; but in the romantic spirit 
which pervades it, in the love of a story purely as a 
story, it is akin to the French literature of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries, and to the English of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth. 

For reasons explained at the end of the last chapter, 
the English romances were, as a group, a century or 
more later than the corresponding French forms. It 
was but natural that most of them should be translations 
or adaptations of French models. Some of the earliest, 
however, are thought to have been originally Teutonic 
stories. The English versions are from the French, but 
the French versions were themselves translated from, 
or at least based upon, Germanic or English or Scandi- 
navian myths. Among these perhaps is King Horn, 
which took final shape in English verse between the 
middle and end of the thirteenth century. In this there 
is none of the attenuated spirit of some of the Arthurian 
romances, — neither the half-sensual chivalry of the 
Conte de la Chan^ette, nor the half-ascetic chivalry of 
parts of the Grail romances. Horn is a boy king exiled 
from his kingdom by paynim invaders. He has mon- 
strous adventures in strange lands, and finally returns 
to reconquer his inheritance. The author found more 
delight in the copious flow of blood than in the amenities 
of knighthood. It is true that the element of love offers 



70 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the chief interest of the story, but even the love-making 
is distinctly different from that in the Conte de la Char- 
rette. Horn was sent for by Rymenhild, a king's 
daughter, and when he entered her bower, 

Rymenhild up gan stonde 
and tok him bi f e honde : 
heo ^ sette him on pelle ^ 
of wyn to drinke his fulle : 
heo makede him faire chere 
and tok him abute f e swere.^ 
Ofte heo him custe ^ 
so wel so hire ^ luste.^ 
"Horn," heo sede, "wijmte strif 
)m shalt haue me to ]n wif. 
Horn, haue of me rewpe " 
and pli3t me pi trewpe." 
Horn ]70 ^ him bi]:>03te 
what he speke mi3te, 

etc. 

It is to be noted, in passing, that King Horn exhibits 
a stage" of transition between the Old English and the 
modern poetry, not only in its substance, but also in its 
metrical form. Each line seems to be modeled roughly 
upon the half-line of the older poetry, for it contains two 
important accented syllables, and an indeterminate num- 
ber of unaccented ones ; but instead of being bound 
together by alliteration these lines are generally made 
to rime. Old-fashioned alliteration is indeed common 
in the poem, but it is not obligatory. In Layamon's 
Brut rime is not uncommon but, as we have seen, 
alliteration is the rule. 

^she. 2(jais. ^ neck. ■* kissed, ^her. ^pleased. '^ pity. ^ then. 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY /I 

28. Malory's Morte Darthur. — Some forty English ro- 
mances are easily accessible in modern editions. In 
general, they were written in more or less close imitation 
of the French fashions already described, even when 
they were not actual translations. They tell stories of 
all the strange worlds of mediaeval fiction ; but the 
world of Homeric myth, or the world of Charlemagne 
and Roland, gave no such pleasure in England as that 
of Arthur's Round Table, and consequently most of the 
best English romances belong to the Arthurian cycle. 
Among these are Gawayne a?id the Green Knight, The 
Quest of the Holy Grail, Lancelot of the Lake, and 
the Morte Arthtcr. All abound in fantastical deeds of 
chivalrous valor. For example, in Lancelot of the Lake 
we are told of one of Arthur's neighbors, the mighty 
King Galiot, who wantonly invades Arthur's land for 
the purpose of reducing it to subjection. After a long 
and fierce contest, Galiot finds that he is on the point 
of winning an overwhelming victory ; but as he sees 
that Arthur's forces are no match for him, and that 
therefore there will be no great glory in such a result, 
he decides to withdraw for a year, to give Arthur time 
to strengthen himself. At the year's end he somewhat 
illogically brings back with him three times as many 
men as he had at first, and the struggle is renewed with 
the old ferocity. In both battles, of course, Lancelot 
is the hero, and in both battles his one desire is to at- 
tract the favorable attention of Guinevere, who watches 
from the walls. 

But the noblest specimen of English mediaeval romance 
is Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, written about 



72 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1470. This was an attempt to put into English prose 
a compendious account of all the deeds of Arthur and 
his knights, as related in the best of the early French 
romances. It was a unification of the whole Arthurian 
cycle, made long after the flourishing period of romance 
by a knight who loved the bygone literature of chivalry, 
and was unwilling to let it die. 

Sir Thomas Malory's compilation is not faultlessly 
made. It is full of inconsistencies and confusing di- 
gressions, and where the author had his choice between 
two versions of a story he sometimes chose the inferior 
one. There is little in it that shows invention, for the 
best incidents and characters were transferred bodily 
from older books. But the author had one great gift — 
the gift of style. His English is sometimes loose and 
often awkward, but it is always picturesque and vivid, 
and it makes the narrative live. It is therefore the best 
reading for one who wants a general introduction to 
mediaeval romance. 

The Morte Darthur well illustrates the complexity of 
the spirit of mediaeval romance. Malory reproduced the 
moral spirit of the court when he told the Tale of the 
Car, and that of the cloister when he told the Quest of 
the Grail. Part of the time we are asked to sympathize 
with Lancelot and Guinevere as we should with any 
romantic lovers, and part of the time they are penitents 
in sackcloth and ashes. Malory took the stories as he 
found them, making little effort to reconcile their dis- 
crepancies. 

Some idea of the way in which successive generations 
of romancers used the materials of the Arthur legend 



THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 73 

may be obtained by comparing several accounts of a 
single incident, such as, for example, the death of the 
king. Geoffrey of Monmouth, after describing Arthur's 
campaign against his sister's son, Modred, and the death 
of the latter in the last great battle in the west, says : 

But the renowned King Arthur was mortally wounded 
also; and being carried thence to the Island of Avallon 
for the healing of his wounds, he abdicated the crown of 
Britain to his kinsman Constantine, son of Cador the Duke 
of Cornwall, in the 542d year of our Lord's incarnation. 

Layamon's account (modernized) is as follows : 

And Arthur was wounded with a broad war-spear. 
Fifteen dreadful wounds he had, in the least of which 
one might thrust two gloves. Then there were no more 
left there in that fight, of the two hundred thousand men 
that lay there hewn to pieces, save only Arthur the king 
and two of his knights. Arthur was most grievously 
wounded. There came to him a lad that was of his own 
kin, the son of Cador, Earl of Cornwall ; Constantine was 
the lad's name, and he was dear to the king. Arthur looked 
on him as he lay on the ground, and spoke these words 
with sorrowful heart : " Constantine, thou art welcome ; 
thou wert Cador's son. Here I commit to thee my king- 
dom : guard thou my Britons to the end of thy life, and 
keep for them all the laws that have stood in my days, and 
all the good laws that stood in the days of Uther. And I 
will go to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante 
the beautiful queen of the elves ; and she shall make all my 
wounds sound, and make me whole with healing draughts. 
And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom and 
dwell with the Britons with great joy." 

Even at these words there came from the sea a little 
boat floating with the waves, and two women therein of 



74 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

wondrous beauty ; and they straightway took Arthur into 
the boat, and gently laid him down, and so they departed. 
Then was it accomplished as Merlin had said, that there 
should be measureless sorrow of Arthur's departure. But 
the Britons believe yet that he is alive, and dwells in. 
Avalun with the fairest of all elves ; and they are still ever 
expecting when Arthur shall return. But there was never 
man born, nor beloved of woman, that can truthfully say 
more of Arthur. 

In the course of the centuries that elapsed before 
Malory gave the final mediaeval version of the story, 
many nev^ details were added. The subject of the 
king's deatli, and the speculation as to his return, 
fills two and a half chapters of the Morte Darthiir, 
Only the greater part of the first can be given here. 

** A, Syr Launcelot," sayd kyng Arthur, **thys day have 
I sore myst the. Alas ! that ever I was ayenst the, for 
now have I my dethe, wherof Syr Gauwayn me warned in 
my dreme." Than Syr Lucan took up the kyng the one 
parte, and Syr Bedwere the other parte, and in the lyftyng 
the kyng sowned, and Syr Lucan fyl in a sowne w^yth the 
lyfte, that the parte of his guttes fyl oute of his bodye. And 
therwyth the noble knyghtes herte braste. And whan the 
kyng awake, he behelde Syr Lucan how he laye fooming at 
the mowth, and parte of his guttes laye at his feet. "Alas ! '' 
sayd the kyng, " thys is to me a ful hevy syght to see thys 
noble duke so deye for my sake, for he wold have holpen 
me that had more nede of helpe than I. Alas ! he wold 
not complayne hym, hys herte was so sette to helpe me. 
Now Jhesu have mercy upon hys soule." Than Syr Bed- 
were wepte for the deth of his brother. " Leve thys 
mornyng andwepyng,'' sayd the kyng, "for al this wyl 
not avaylle me ; for wyte thou wel, and I myght lyve my 
self, the deth of Syr Lucan wolde greve me ever more, but 






THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY 75 

my tyme hyeth fast," sayd the kyng. "Therfore," sayd 
Arthur unto Syr Bedwere, '' take thou Excalybur, my good 
swerde, and goo with it to yonder water syde, and whan 
thou comest there, I charge the throwe my swerde in that 
water, and come ageyn and telle me what thou there seest." 
''My lord," sayd Bedwere, "your commaundement shal be 
doon, and lyghtly brynge you worde ageyn." 

So Syr Bedwere departed, and by the waye he behelde 
that noble swerde, that the pomel and the hafte was al of 
precyous stones ; and thenne he sayd to hym self, " Yf I 
throwe this ryche swerde in the water, therof shal never 
come good, but harme and losse." And thenne Syr Bed- 
were hydde Excalybur under a tree. And so as sone as he 
myght he came ageyn unto the kyng, and sayd he had ben 
at the water, and had throwen the swerd in to the water. 
''What sawe thou there?" sayd the kyng. "Syr," he 
sayd, "I sawe no thynge but wawes and wyndes." "That 
is untrewly sayd of the," sayd the kynge. " Therfore goo 
thou lyghtelye ageyn, and do my commaundemente ; as 
thou arte to me leef and dere, spare not but throwe it in." 
Than Syr Bedwere retorned ageyn, and took the swerde 
in hys hande, and than hym thought synne and shame to 
throwe awaye that nobyl swerde ; and so efte he hydde the 
swerde, and retorned ageyn and tolde to the kyng that he 
had ben at the water, and done his commaundemente. 
"What sawe thou there?" sayd the kyng. "Syr," he 
sayd, " I sawe no thynge but the waters wappe and wawes 
wanne." "A, traytour, untrewe," sayd kyng Arthur, "now 
hast thou betrayed me twyse. Who wold have wente that 
thou that hast been to me so leef and dere, and thou arte 
named a noble knyghte, and wold betraye me for the 
richesse of the swerde ? But now goo ageyn lyghtly, for 
thy longe taryeng putteth me in grete jeopardye of my lyf, 
for I have taken colde ; and but yf thou do now as I byd 
the, yf ever I may see the I shal slee the with myn owne 
handes, for thou woldest for my ryche swerde see me dede." 



76 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Thenne Syr Bedwere departed, and wente to the swerde, 
and lyghtly took hit up, and wente to the water syde, and 
there he bounde the gyrdyl aboute the hyltes, and thenne 
he threwe the swerde as farre in to the water as he myght. 
And there cam an arme and an hande above the water and 
mette it, and caught it, and so shoke it thryse and braun- 
dysshed ; and than vanysshed awaye the hande wyth the 
swerde in the water. So Syr Bedwere came ageyn to the 
kyng and tolde hym what he sawe. 

"Alas ! " sayd the kyng, "helpe me hens, for I drede me 
I have taryed over longe." Than Syr Bedwere toke the 
kyng upon his backe, and so wente wyth hym to that water 
syde, and whan they were at the water syde, evyn fast by 
the banke hoved a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in 
hit, and emonge hem al was a queue, and al they had 
blacke hoodes, and al theywepte and shryked whan they 
sawe kyng Arthur. "Now put me in to the barge," sayd 
the kyng ; and so he dyd softelye. And there receyved 
hym thre queues wyth grete mornyng, and soo they sette 
hem doun, and in one of their lappes kyng Arthur layed 
hys heed, and than that queue sayd, " A, dere broder, why 
have ye taryed so longe from me ? Alas ! this wounde on 
your heed hath caught overmoche colde." And soo than 
they rowed from the londe, and Syr Bedwere behelde all 
tho ladyes goo from hym. Than Syr Bedwere cryed, " A, 
my lord Arthur, what shal become of me, now ye goo from 
me and leve me here allone emonge myn enemyes ? " 
"Comfort thy self," sayd the kyng, "and doo as wel as 
thou mayst, for in me is no truste for to truste in. For I 
wyl in to the vale of Avylyon, to hele me of my grevous 
wounde. And yf thou here never more of me, praye for 
my soule." But ever the queues and ladyes wepte and 
shryched, that hit was pyte to here. And assone as Syr 
Bedwere had loste the syght of the baarge, he wepte and 
waylled, and so took the foreste. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 

29. The Bestiary. — Retracing our way to the thirteenth 
century, we find that the development of the romantic 
spirit had Httle or no effect upon the purely religious 
literature of England. There were paraphrases of the 
Scriptures, lives of saints, sermons, and other kinds of 
didactic writing, in greater abundance than before. The 
legend of St. Alexis has already been considered. One 
other specimen will serve, not indeed as a type, for it is 
unique in English literature, but as a curious illustra- 
tion of some phases of mediaeval feeling. The Bestiaiy 
begins as follows : 

Natura leonis prima. 

De leun stant on hille, 
and he man hunten here, 
OSer t)urg his nese smel 
Smake ^at he negge, 
Bi wile weie so he wile 
To dele nit5er wenden, 
AUe hise fet-steppes 
After him he filled, 
Drage^ dust wit5 his stert 
^er he dun steppet5, 
Ot5er dust oSer deu, 
"Sat he ne cunne is finden, 
driueS dun to his den 
^ar he him bergen wille. 



78 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

In modern English this and the Hnes immediately 
succeeding are as follows : 

First nature of the lion. 

The lion stands on a hill. 
If he hear a man hunting, 
Or through his nose's scent 
Perceive that he approaches, 
By whatsoever way he will 
Go down to the valley. 
All his footsteps 
After him he filleth ; 
Draggeth dust with his tail 
Into the places where he steps, 
(Either dust or dew). 
So the hunter cannot find them ; 
And so runs down to his den 
Where he will hide himself. 

Second. 

• Another nature he hath : 

When he is born 
Still lieth the lion. 
And he stirreth not from sleep 
Till the sun hath shone 
Thrice about him. 
Then his father raiseth him 
With the roar that he makes. 

T/iird. 

The third law hath the lion : 
When he lies down to sleep 
He shall never shut 
The lids of his eyes. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 79 

Signification of the first nature. 

Very high is that hill 

Which is the kingdom of heaven. 

Our Lord is the lion 

Who lives there above. 

How when it pleased him 

To alight here on earth, 

Might never devil know, 

Though he be a clever hunter. 

How he came down 

Nor how he made his den 

In that gentle maiden, 

Mary by name. 

Who bore him for the good of man. 

Second and third. 

When our Lord was dead. 

And buried, as his will was. 

In a stone still he lay 

Till it came the third day. 

His Father aided him so 

That he rose from the dead then, 

To keep us alive. 

He waketh (so is his will) 

As a shepherd for his flock ; 

He is shepherd, we are sheep ; 

Shield us he will. 

If we hearken to his word 

That we go nowhere astray. 

The rest of the poem takes up a number of other 
anirrials, points out their supposed peculiarities, and ex- 
plains their allegorical significance. The quaintest part, 
perhaps, is that about the elephant. He is described as 



8o EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

an Indian animal of such unwieldy build that if he ever 
falls down he cannot get up again without help. When 
he is sick he wades into deep water, which keeps him 
half afloat, and when he wants to sleep he leans against 
a tree. Hunters sometimes discover which are the ele- 
phant's favorite trees, and saw them half in two ; so that 
when the animal comes to one of them and trustfully 
leans against it, it yields and he falls down. Then, how- 
ever, he roars aloud, and other elephants come to help 
him. They struggle hard, but are unsuccessful ; so they 
add their cries to his, and then a little elephant comes 
up : he pushes his head under the sufferer's side, as a 
sort of wedge, and so raises him. Then follows the 
" signification." Adam fell through a tree, and in his fall 
the whole race was lost. Man cried aloud to heaven, 
and Moses and the prophets came, but they could not 
raise him to his former estate ; but they all lifted up 
their voices, and at last Christ came, and through him 
the redemption was accomplished. 

This poem aptly illustrates the unscientific credulity 
of the mediaeval mind, and also its fondness for allegory. 
These two qualities are the essence of much of the 
beauty of mediaevalism, in the forms in which modern 
artists have sought to revive it. In the nineteenth- 
century pre-Raphaelites, for example, we find a mystical 
faculty for seeing in material wonders a deep spiritual 
significance. In their hands mediaevalism assumes a rare 
and genuine beauty, but they have accomplished this by 
a transformation rather than by a literal reproduction 
of its spirit. The Bestiary illustrates not unfairly the 
usual crudeness of the original. 



J 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 8 1 

The origin of this poem is obscure. The ancients 
were fond of ascribing fabulous quaUties to animals, as 
we know from ^sop's fables, for example. The early 
Christians, who had a passion for allegory, devised 
Christian interpretations of these qualities, and in the 
course of time custom established a fixed myth and a 
fixed signification for each animal. The panther, for 
example, who always suggested Christ, was a beautiful 
animal with a sweet-scented breath. As early as the 
fourth century a certain Christian writer, having occa- 
sion to mention a peculiar *' nature" of the serpent, 
cites "the physiologists" as authority; from which we 
may infer that Bestiaries already existed. In the middle 
ages a dozen or more of them were written, in a dozen 
different languages ; and they were commonly spoken of 
as written by " Physiologus." Thus we read in Chaucer 
that 

Chauntecleer so free 
Song merier than the mermayde in the see ; 
For Phisiologus seith sikerly ^ 
How that they singen wel and merily. 

A Latin Bestiary of the eighth century is the earliest 
known, but evidently not the earliest written. Of course 
these books were written for the instruction of the peo- 
ple ; and it seems pretty clear that their odd stories 
must have been believed. This is not so hard to under- 
stand, when we recall the strange beliefs we ourselves 
held in childhood, about ear-wigs, darning-needles, horse- 
hair snakes, etc. 

^ Certainly. 



82 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

30. The Earliest Lyrics. — The following song is pre- 
served in a manuscript in the British Museum. Its date 
must be about 1250. 

Sumer is icumen in, Ihude sing cuccu : 

Growe]:> sed and blowej? med ^ and spring]? ))e wude nu : ^ 

Sing cuccu. 
Awe blete)? after lomb, Ihou]?^ after calue cu : 
Bulluc stertep,* bucke uertef>,'^ murie sing, cuccu. 

Cuccu, cuccu, 
Wei singes pu, cuccu ; ne swik^ ])u nauer nu. 

The following is of slightly later date. Only the first 
half of the song is given here. 

Bytuene Mershe & Aueril 
When spray biginnep to springe, 

])e Intel foul haf hire wyl 
On ^ hyre lud ^ to synge ; 
Ich ^ libbe ^^ in louelonginge 
For semlokest ^^ of alle f ynge ; 
He^^ may me blisse bringe, 

Icham ^^ in hire baundoun.^* 
An hendy hap ichabbe yhent,^^ 
Ichot ^^ from heuene it is me sent, 
From alle wymmen mi loue is lent ^^ 

& lyht ^^ on Alysoun. 

On heu ^^ hire her ^^ is fayr ynoh, 
Hire browe broune, hire e3e blake ; 
W^ip lossum ^^ chere he on me loh ; ^^ 

1 mead. ^ now. ^ loweth. "^ leapeth. ^ runs to cover. ^ cease. 
" according to. ^ voice. ^ I. ^^ i^ye. ^^ the fairest. ^^ she. 
^^ I am. ^* power. ^^ A happy fortune I have achieved. i^ I wot. 
^' turned. ^^ alighted. ^^ hue. ^^ hair. ^i lovely. ^'^ laughed. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 83 

Wi]7 middel smal & wel ymake ; ^ 
Bote ^ he me wolle to hire take, 
Forte ^ buen hire owen make,^ 
Longe to lyuen ichulle ^ forsake, 

& feye ^ fallen adoun. 
An hendy hap ichabbe yhent, 
Ichot from heuene it is me sent. 
From alle wymmen mi loue is lent 

& lyht on Alysoun. 

Both these songs are simple and crude, but they have 
something that is better than polish, namely, spontaneity. 
The Cuckoo Song is commonly regarded as of popular 
origin, like our southern negro melodies, for example ; 
but the words are accompanied in the manuscript with 
the music, and experts say that the music is too elaborate 
for a true folk-song. Probably both songs were com- 
posed by educated men, — clerks, as they were commonly 
called, — and doubtless there were many like them which 
no ^^ hendy hap" has preserved for us. During the 
early Middle English period the great universities were 
expanding, and sending out continually greater numbers 
of clerks. At the same time, as we shall see, the church 
was not extending its usefulness. Thus there came 
into being an increasing number of wandering clerks, 
educated for the church but only nominally attached 
to it. They had studied rhetoric and theology at Paris 
and Oxford, but had observed human nature in wayside 
taverns ; and they could use the lyrical art of France 
to give expression to the life and character of England. 
Chaucer tells us of two unbeneficed clerks ; one was 

1 made. ^ unless. ^ for to. ^ mate. ^ I will. ^ dying. 



84 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

a sober and God-fearing man who spent all his slender 
means on books, and cared for little beyond learning 
and devotion ; but the other sang and played the psal- 
tery, and cultivated habits of study only because they 
helped him to mask his worldly inclinations. With a 
large and increasing leisure class of this sort, it was 
natural that a considerable body of secular lyrics should 
come into being. 

31. Fabliau and Satire. — T\iQ fabliaux were a species 
of short verse-narrative very common in France during 
the thirteenth century, — that is, during the best period 
of the romances of chivalry. Only one English fabliau 
has come down to us from this period, but that one 
illustrates some interesting features of contemporary 
life. It is known as Dame Siriz^ and is substantially 
as follows : 

There was once a clerk named Wilekin, who fell in love 
with a married woman, Margeri. He called on her once 
when her husband had gone to town on business, told her 
how for many a year he had been pining for her, and 
begged her to accept his love. She assured him with 
emphatic vows that she would, not think of such a thing 
for a moment ; that she and her husband were very happy 
together, and that she was not the kind of w^oman to 
deceive him. Wilekin accordingly went away heavy at 
heart ; but it occurred to him that the wise witch. Dame 
Siriz, might help him. He called on her, therefore, and 
besought her with fair speech to use some of her charms to 
turn the heart of the fair Margeri. The old hag assumed 
at first an air of virtuous indignation, protesting that she 
was a holy woman, ignorant of all the arts of witchcraft, 
and devoted to alms-deeds and prayer. When, however, 
Wilekin offered her a pair of shoes, some warm furs, and 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 85 

money to boot, she decided that she could conscientiously 
interfere in his behalf. Accordingly she calls her dog, 
puts pepper in its eyes and mustard in its mouth, and takes 
it to the house of Margeri. There she begs for food and 
drink, and after the good wife has supplied her wants she 
bursts into tears. ^* Poor woman," said Margeri, **what 
aileth thee?" **Alas," replied the witch, "I had a beau- 
tiful daughter ; a lovelier girl no man ever saw ; and she 
was married to an excellent husband whom she loved all 
too well. One day when he had gone out there came a 
tonsured clerk and offered her his love, but she would 
have none of him ; and then he wrought an enchantment 
upon her, and turned her into a dog. This is my daughter 
that I am telling you about ; see how her eyes water, and 
how the tears flow down her cheeks. No wonder, then, 
that my heart is burst asunder. And any young wife to 
whom a clerk offers his love must care very little for her 
life if she does not accept his offer straightway." There- 
upon the simple young woman is in terror lest a similar 
mischance befall her, and she begs Dame Siriz to find 
Wilekin and bring him back to her. When he comes she 
says, ** Welcome, Wilekin, sweet thing; thou art more wel- 
come than the king. I have changed my mind, and would 
not for anything have you suffer." And so they are recon- 
ciled, and Danie Siriz leaves them happy in each other's love. 

The Vox and the Wolf, a poem of some 300 lines 
v^ritten about the year 1300, may v^ell be classed v^ith 
Dame Siriz, although strictly it is not a fabliau. That 
name is commonly reserved for comic stories about 
common people. The Vox and the Wolf is a version of 
part of the great French pseudo-epic which celebrated 
the deeds of Reynard the Fox ; but in spirit, as we shall 
see, it has more of the fabliau than of the epic or the 
romance. 



86 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

A fox came from the woods, half dead with hunger. 
He did not walk along the street, for he disliked meeting 
men ; he would rather have met one hen than fifty women. 
So he skulked along till he came to a house in which there 
were five hens and a cock. The cock had flown up to his 
roost, and two of the hens sat near him. <*Fox," said the 
cock, " what dost thou there ? Curse you, go home. You 
are always making trouble with our hens. For heaven's 
sake, be still." (Here the narrative is a little confusing, 
but apparently the fox eats one or more of the hens.) 
Then quoth the fox, " Sir Chanticleer, come down here. I 
have only been doing your hens a kindness ; I have let 
their blood ; they had a disease under the rib, and would 
have died if I had not bled them. Come down, for you 
have the same trouble in the spleen, and you have but a 
short time to live. I must either bleed you, or go for the 
priest." 

But the cock was proof against his blandishments ; and 
the fox had to rest content with the prey already seized. 
Now, however, he began to suffer the torments of thirst, 
and sought a well. There was one close by, with two 
buckets so attached that when one went up the other went 
down. Not understanding the contrivance, the fox jumped 
into the upper bucket, hoping to find water there ; and 
down it went with him to the bottom. There was water 
enough down there, to be sure, and he drank his fill, but 
yet he was not easy in his mind, and he straightway began 
to repent of his sins. 

Just then a wolf came by, seeking something to allay 
the pangs of hunger, and sat down for a moment by the 
well. The fox knew him by his howl, for they were near 
neighbors. "Ah, Sigrim," he cried, "how I wish you were 
here with me!" "With you!" said the wolf; "what 
should I be doing in the pit ? " "You are unwise," replied 
the fox ; " here is the bliss of paradise ; here I have ever- 
lasting happiness in prospect, without pain or sorrow. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 8/ 

Here are meat and drink, and bliss without labor ; here is 
no more hunger, nor any other woe." The wolf laughed. 
^^Are you dead,'' said he, "or alive?" "Why should I 
care to be alive ? " replied the fox ; "why live in the filthy 
and sinful world, when there are all sorts of joys here ? 
There are sheep and goats down here." This last was too 
much for the wolf, and he begged the fox to show him 
the way thither. The fox accordingly required him to 
shrive himself (Reynard acting as father confessor), and 
after the wolf had given a humiliating account of his sins, 
the fox directed him to get into the bucket that he saw at 
the top of the well. 

So down went the wolf, and when he was halfway down 
he was surprised to see the fox going up. "What now. 
Gossip," said the wolf, "whither wilt ? " "I am going up," 
said the fox ; " go you down, and take what you can find 
there. I am heartily glad that you have repented and con- 
fessed. I will have your knell rung, and masses sung for 
your soul." So the fox ran away, and the wolf remained 
at the bottom, cursing. In the morning a friar came to the 
well to draw water, and found the bucket heavy enough. 
When he had drawn it nearly to the top he saw the wolf, 
and cried, " The devil is in the pit ! " Thereupon his 
brethren came with pikes and staves and stones, and the 
wolf was done to death. 

One other specimen of the comic literature of the time 
will suffice. This is TJie Land of Cokaygne, an English 
version of a satirical fantasy current in many languages 
in the thirteenth century. The English poem is perhaps 
as late as 1300. 

Fur in see bi west Spayngne 

Is a lond ihote Cokaygne. 

fer nis ^ lond under heuen-riche^ 

1 is not. - heaven's kingdom. 



88 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Of wel, of godnis, hit iliche ; ^ 

])0^ paradis be miri and bri3t, 

Cokaygn is of fairir si3t. 

What is per in paradis 

Bot grasse and flure and grene ris ?^ 

Be]) ] er no man but two, 
Hely ^ and Enok also ; 
Elinglich^ may hi^ go, 
Whar fer wonip^ men no mo. 

In Cokaygne is met and drink 
Wifute care, how,"^ and swink.^ 

Everything good is plentiful. There are no snakes, fleas, 
rainstorms or diseases ; and water is used only to swim in, 
or to beautify the landscape. Rivers are generally of milk, 
honey, and wine. In this land there is a beautiful abbey. 
Its walls are all of pasties, fish, and meat ; the shingles are 
pan-cakes and the turrets are puddings. There are charm- 
ing song-birds to delight the ear day and night, and geese 
fly ready roasted on the spit, crying, "geese all hot, all 
hot." Smaller fowl, broiled and seasoned, fly right into a 
man's mouth when he wants them. 

The young monks go out to play every afternoon. They 
spread out their broad sleeves and their hoods for wings, 
and fly through the air like any bird, and the abbot delights 
to watch them. When it is time for evensong he makes a 
loud noise by spanking some young novice ; and the monks, 
hearing the sound, come gleefully back. They merrily join 
in the spanking, and then go meekly in for their evening 
service and their evening drink. 

There are other occupations in this abbey, of a more 
degraded nature. Whoever proves himself best adapted 

1 like. 2 branches. ^ Elijah. * sorrowfully. ^ they. ^ dwell. 
■^ trouble. ^ toil. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 89 

to the life, and devotes himself with most singleness of 
purpose to fleshly enjoyments, will eventually rise to be 
the father abbot. 

The man who wants to reach this blissful land must 
first do a long penance ; he must wallow for seven years in 
the filth of a pig-sty, buried up to the chin. So shall he 
earn his passage. 

It is important to observe that all these poems were 
written in the romantic period ; yet their authors' atti- 
tude towards life is diametrically opposite to that of the 
romancers. Love, instead of being a kind of idolatry, is 
a game played with false cards. Saintliness is all hum- 
bug, and holy men are rascals. Women are harmless 
only if they are stupid ; generally they are clever, deceit- 
ful creatures, unworthy of confidence and incapable of 
constancy, and men are their dupes. 

All this is expressed not in bitterness, but with the 
gay good-humor of a man who has too little sensibility 
to be a cynic. Most of the fablianx are hardly satirical 
at all in intent. In Dame Siriz, for example, the author 
gives us in effect a trenchant satire upon some of the 
things that were sacred to the romancers ; but his pur- 
pose was doubtless merely to tell an amusing story, 
presenting life as he saw it. The satire in The Vox 
and the Wo (f is equally unconscious. In The Land of 
Cokaygne there is of course a deliberate intent to satirize 
the regular clergy, and the utter lack of spirituality in 
much of what passed for religion ; but (except perhaps 
in the last lines of the poem) we see little evidence of 
any strength of feeling. Whatever is, is ; so let us 
laugh and be merry at everything. 



90 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

The difference in spirit between these poems and the 
romances is easy to explain. The fabliaux were com- 
monly composed for the middle classes — the bourgeois 
element. Political and economic causes were, in the 
thirteenth century, bringing these people forward to a 
more active participation in affairs ; and they had to 
have their literature, too. In the hall of the baron the 
romancer chanted his romance ; but the master-carpen- 
ter, loafing at the ale-house, would prefer to hear a 
fabliau recited, and some twopenny jongleur would 
always be ready to gratify him. The fabliaux were cer- 
tainly not above the average level of mediaeval sentiment 
and morality ; they probably bore about the same rela- 
tion to life as the comic songs of our own variety stage, 
and they must not be taken too seriously as a revelation 
of contemporary feeling. But their existence, side by 
side with the romances of chivalry, strengthens the argu- 
ment that the latter, in their semi-deification of love and 
their seemingly reverential attitude towards woman, were 
little more than a caprice of fashion ; that instead of 
presenting seriously the attitude of serious men toward 
life, they were in this respect merely a literary artifice. 

A glimpse is given in these poems of the darker side 
of mediaeval religion. Before the period that we have 
reached, monasticism had gone into a lamentable deca- 
dence. It was a natural result of the attractiveness of 
monastery life that many men dedicated themselves to 
it with motives not primarily religious. Partly for this 
reason, and partly because of a tendency of human na- 
ture which seems inevitable, when responsibility and 
competition are removed, monastic austerity too often 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 9 1 

yielded place to monastic luxury, continence to corrup- 
tion, altruism to rapacity. Of course no sweeping con- 
demnation must be passed upon all the monasteries of 
the period. New orders were continually founded, with 
new rules of self-denial and holiness ; scores of them 
are known to history ; but the chief cause of the great 
number of new foundations was the short-lived purity 
of many of the old ones. Moreover, the secular clergy 
(i.e., the clergy not attached to religious establishments, 
as were the monks, friars, etc.) shared to a great extent 
in the corruptions of the regular brethren. In the later 
middle ages the parish priest becomes a target for satire 
as well as the monk — the bishop only less often than 
the abbot. 

32. Richard Rolle of Hampole. — Richard Rolle was born 
at Thornton, in Yorkshire, near the end of the thirteenth 
century, and died in the year 1349 at Hampole, near 
Doncaster. He was educated at Oxford, but at the age 
of nineteen left the university and his home to assume 
the garb and manner of a hermit. His life thereafter 
was partly that of a recluse and partly that of a wander- 
ing preacher, as the spirit moved him. In his solitary 
cell he fasted and prayed, and wrote voluminous works 
in prose and verse. In his other capacity he was one of 
the most influential men of the time. He had a power 
over others which his words alone do not account for. 
He was evidently a holy man, — not one of the sham 
religious tramps so common in the fourteenth century, — 
and his eloquence was abetted by the power of a strong 
and pure personality. He was reputed to have the power 
of performing miracles, and it is clear that he believed 



92 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

himself to have it. He had an active mind, but not a 
speculative one. Consequently we find him one of the 
strongest exponents of mediaeval Catholicism. He ac- 
cepted the doctrines of the church without question, and 
preached them with vigor ; and in his long poem. The 
Pricke of Conscience^ we can see the faith of the middle 
ages in its purest form. The following extracts are 
selected less for their doctrinal interest than as illustra- 
tions of the practical working of mediaeval religion in the 
mediaeval mind. 

( The begifining of man's life.) 

[When man] was born til -^ f is werldys light 
465 He ne had nouther strenthe ne myght, 

Nouther to ga ^ ne yhit to stand, 

Ne to crepe with fote, ne with hand. 

pan has a man less myght fan a beste 

When he is born, and is sene leste : 
470 For a best when it es born, may ga 

Als-tite ^ aftir, and ryn to and fra ; 

Bot a man has na * myght f ar-to. 

When he es born, swa ^ to do ; 

For ]?an may he noght stande ne crepe 
475 Bot ligge^ and sprawel, and cry and wepCo 

For unnethes "^ es a child born fully 

pat it ne bygynnes to goule and cry ; 

And by fat cry men knaw fan 

Whether it be man or weman, 
480 For when it es born it cryes swa ^ : 

If it be man it says *^ a. a,'' 

pat f e first letter es of fe nam 

Of our forme-fader Adam. 

1 to. 2 go^ walk. ^ straightway. * no. ^ so. ^ lie. 
■^ hardly. ^ so. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 93 

And if ])e child a woman be, 
485 When it es born it says " e. e/' 
E es fe first letter and fe hede 
Of fe name of Eve fat bygan our dede.^ 
parfor a clerk made on fis manere 
pis vers of metre fat es wreten here : 

He says, *^ al er we born gretand,^ 
And makand ^ a sorowful sembland. 
For to shew f e grete wrechednes 
505 Of our kynd fat in us es." 



(T/ie nature of the mature man,^ 

pe bygynnyng of man, als * I talde, 

Es vile and wreched to behalde ; 

Bot how foule es man aftir-warde 

Tels fus, openly, saynt Bernarde : 
560 Homo nihil aliud est, quam sperma 

fetidum, saccus stercorum et esca vermium, 

Saynt Bernard says als fe buke telles, 

pat " man here es nathyng elles 

Bot a foule slyme, wlatsome ^ til men, 
565 And a sekful ^ of stynkand fen,"^ 

And wormes fode '' fat fai wald have. 

When he es dede and layde in grave. 

Bot som men and women fayre semes 

To fe syght with-outen, als men demes, 
570 And fat shewes noght elles bot a skyn ; 

Bot wha-swa moght se fam with-in. 

Fouler carion moght never be 

pan he suld fan of fam se. 

parfor he fat had als sharp syght, 

1 death. 2 weeping. ^ making. * as. ^ loathsome. 
^ sackful. "^ dirt. 



94 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

575 And cler eghen ^ and als bright 

Als has a best fat men Lynx calles, 
pat may se thurgh thik stane walles, 
Littel lykyng suld a man haf fan 
For to behald a faire woman, 

580 For fan mught he se, with-outen doute, 
Als wele with-in als with-oute. 
And if he with-in saw hir right, 
Sho ^ war ful wlatsom til his sight ; 
pus foul with-in ilk ^ man es, 

585 Als fe buk says and bers witnes. 

{The certainty of death ^ 

880 For in fis world es nane swa witty, 
Swa fair, swa Strang, ne swa myghty, 
Emperour, kyng, duke, ne caysere, 
Ne other fat bers grete state here, 
Ne riche, ne pure, bond ne fre, 

885 Lered^ or lawed,^ what-swa he be, 
pat he ne sal turne at fe last oway. 
Til poudre and erthe and vyle clay ; 
And wormes sal ryve hym in sondre ; 
And f arfor haf I mykel ^ wondere 

890 pat unnethes '^ any man wille se 
What he was, and what he sal be. 
Bot wha-so wald in hert cast 
What he was, and sal be at fe last. 
And what he es, whyles he lyves here, 

895 He suld fynd ful litel matere 

To mak ioy whilles he here duelles, 

Als a versifiour in metre f us telles : 

Si giiis sentiret^ quo tendit^ et unde veniret^ 

Nufiqicam gauderet, sed in omne tempore fle>'et, 

1 eyes. 2 she. ^ ga^h. * learned. ^ lewd, 

^ much, great. "^ hardly. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 95 

900 He says, "wha-so wille fele and se, 
Wethen he com and whider sal he, 
Suld never be blythe hot ioy forsake, 
And alle tyme grete ^ and sorow make." 
Whar-to ]?an es man here swa myry, 

905 And swa tendre of his vile body, 

pat sal rote and with wormes be gnawen. 
And swa ugly to syght may be knawen ? 



(The pains of death ^ 

pus sal dede visite ilk man, 
And yhit na man discryve ^ it can. 
For here lyves nan,^ under hevenryke,^ 
pat can telle til what pe ded es lyke. 

1900 Bot fe payn of dede fat al sal fele 
A philosopher fus discrived wele ; 
For he lykend mans lyf til a tre 
pat war growand,^ if it swa mught be, 
Thurgh a mans hert and swa shuld sprynge, 

1905 pat obout war lapped with fe hert strynge. 

And ];e croppe ^ out at his mouth mught shote, 
And to ilka ioynt war fested a rote ; 
And ilka vayne of pe mans body 
Had a rote festend fast parby, 

1910 And in ilka taa and fynger of hand 
War a rote fra pat tre growand ; 
And ilka lym on ilka syde 
With rotes of pat tre war occupyde ; 
Yf pat tre war tite^ pulled cute 

1915 At a titte^ with al pe rotes oboute, 
pe rotes suld pan rayse par-with 
Ilka vayn and ilka synoghe and lith.^ 

1 weep. 2 describe. ^ none. * the kingdom of heaven. ^ growing. 
^ top. "^ suddenly. ^ on a sudden. ^ limb. 



96 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

A mare ^ payne couthe ^ na man in hert cast 
pan ))is war, als lang als it suld last. 
1920 And yhit halde I fe payne of dede mare 

And mare Strang and hard, fan fis payn ware. 

2220 For when fe lyf sal pas fra a man 
Devels sal gadir obout hym pan, 
To ravissche fe saul with fam away 
Tyl pyne of helle, if f ai may. 
Als wode ^ lyons ]?ai sal fan fare 

2225 And raumpe on hym, and skoul, and stare. 
And grymly gryn on hym and blere,* 
And hydus braydes ^ mak, hym to fere ; ^ 
pai sal fande ^ at his last endyng 
Hym in-to wanhope ^ for to bring, 

2230 Thurgh thretynges fat fai sal mak. 

And thurgh f e ferdnes ^ fat he sal tak. 
Ful hydus sightes fai sal shew hym 
pat his chere ^^ sal make grisly and grim, 
pat sight he sal se with gastly eghe ^^ 

2235 With payn of dede fat he most dreghe.^^ 



{The pains of hell ^ 

I fynde wryten paynes fourtene, 
Thurgh whilk ^^ f e synful sal be pyned ay. 
In body and saul aftir domesday ; 
6555 pG whilk er als general paynes of helle, 
And whilk fas er I sal yhow telle. 
pe first es fire swa hate ^^ to reken 
pat na maner of thyng may it sleken.^^ 

1 greater. ^ could. ^ mad. * leer. ^ grimaces. ^ terrify. 
'^ try. ^ despair. ^ fright. ^'^ countenance. ^^ eye. ^^ endure. 
1^ which. 1* hot. 1^ quench. 



THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 97 

pe secunde es calde als says som, 
6560 pat na hete of fire may overcom. 

pe thred alswa es filthe and stynk 

pat es stranger fan any hert may thynk. 

pe ferthe es hunger sharpe and Strang. 

pe fift es brynnand threst omang.^ 
6565 pe sext es swa mykel myrknes,^ 

pat it may be graped, swa thik it es. 

pe sevend es pe horribel sight 

Of ]:'e devels fat par er hydusly dight. 

pe eghtend payne es vermyn grete, 
6570 pat pe synful men sal gnaw and frete.^ 

pe neghend es dyngyng * of devels hand, 

With melles ^ of yren hate glowand. 

pe tend payne es gnawing with-in 

Of conscience pat bites als vermyn. 
6575 pe ellevend es hate teres of gretyng,^ 

pat pe synful sal scalden in pe dounfallyng. 

pe twelfte es shame and shenshepe '^ of syn 

pat pai sal haf pat never sal blyn.^ 

pe prettend es bandes of fire brinnand, 
6580 pat pai sal be bunden with fote and hand. 

pe fourtend payne despayre es cald, 

pat pe synful sal ay in hert hald. 

Alle pir ^ er generale paynes in helle ; 

Bot par er other ma pan tung may telle, 
6585 Or hert may thynk or eer may here, 

Of special paynes pat er sere,^^ 

pe whilk many, aftir ^^ pai er worthy, 

Sal thole ^^ ever-mare in saule and body ; 

Bot of alle pa paynes can I noght say, 

For na nian pam reken ne specyfy may. 

1 in addition. ^ darkness. ^ eat. * beating. ^ mallets. ^ weep- 
ing. "^ disgrace. ^ cease. ^ these. '^^ various. ^^ according 
as. 12 suffer. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE AGE OF CHAUCER 

33. The Fourteenth Century. — King Edward III reigned 
from 1327 to 1377. When he came to the throne he 
was a mere boy, helpless in the hands of his mother's 
favorite, Robert Mortimer, and in the last years of his 
reign he was a helpless old man, in the arms of his own 
favorite, Alice Ferrers. Between those periods, however, 
there were great days ; and the king and his illustrious 
son, the Black Prince, are among the most noteworthy 
figures in the history of English chivalry. 

We are concerned chiefly with the social history of Eng- 
land, but part of the great social development of the four- 
teenth century was closely connected with the personal 
achievements of the king and the prince. They were at 
war with France during the greater part of the reign, and 
their victories at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) were 
its most striking single events. These great victories, 
however, won against tremendous numerical odds, were 
directly due to developments within the English nation. 
The old idea of chivalry, to which France still clung, was 
that the knights did all the heavy fighting, while the 
peasantry were a mere rabble whose safety or slaughter 
was of little consequence. At the Battle of Crecy the 
French chivalry encountered the English yeomanry with 
their long-bows and cloth-yard arrows, and could not get 

98 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 99 

near enough to crush them. At Poitiers King John's 
army of 50,000 was utterly routed by 8000 men under 
the Black Prince, and the victory again was due to the 
English yeomen. 

Thus military causes were helping the middle classes 
in England to a novel prominence. Other forces, too, 
were doing a similar work. The parliamentary system 
had developed far enough to bring gentlemen and bur- 
gesses of the towns together, with common aims and 
interests ; and the industrial system was by degrees be- 
coming one of employer and wage-earner instead of master 
and villein. The villein was the small tenant who, in- 
stead of paying money rent, gave a stated number of 
days' labor to the tillage of his master's acres. He was 
not in theory a slave, but neither w^as he practically a free 
man ; and he had long been mildly agitating for a change. 
It was in the fourteenth century that the backbone of the 
old system was broken, and money wages and money rents 
generally substituted for the old conditions of feudal ten- 
ure. The Black Death, a terrible plague which visited 
England about the middle of the century, killing a third, 
and perhaps a half, of the population in a single year, was 
instrumental in furthering this development. It took off 
such a large proportion of the laboring classes that wages 
rose to unprecedented figures. Villeins were tempted 
to run away from the estates to which they were legally 
bound, and the peasant class in general w^ere filled with 
a new spirit of independence. A tragical uprising which 
came in 1381 proved futile, but it was a symptom of a 
new social condition, an abortive effort towards that de- 
mocracy which in the last few generations has revolution- 



lOO EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ized the western world. The Uterature of the fourteenth 
century is filled with manifestations of the new spirit. 

The religious condition of England is also of great im- 
portance in our study. It is sometimes supposed that the 
mediaeval mind was touched with a deep and peculiar 
religious feeling. This belief finds expression notably 
in those painters and poets who seek to revive the spirit 
of mediaeval religion. That spirit, they say, was a passion- 
ate and beautiful mysticism : the Deity was then more 
vividly realized than now, as a living presence in the 
human soul ; and in spiritual communion with Him, there 
was an ecstasy of emotion which this harder age cannot 
feel. Yet it is doubtful if this assumed intensity of feeling 
was really commoner in the middle ages than in the nine- 
teenth century. Distance has lent to mediaeval things an 
enchantment not wholly proper to them. Mediaeval reli- 
gion was half inherited from pagan creeds, and was dis- 
tinguished by a vivid anthropomorphism : to the common 
mind, God and Christ were primarily men of preternatural 
powers, but with human emotions, form and speech ; and 
whatever we find of peculiar intensity in the common 
religious conceptions of the time is often due to the com- 
parative ease with which these matter-of-fact persons 
were realized by the imagination. In the spiritual-minded 
this kind of belief took on a spiritual coloring, as we have 
seen, but in the majority there was little spirituality, and 
their religion was as gross as it was vivid. Asceticism, at 
best, was not the practice of the whole mediaeval world, 
but only the ideal of a small part of it. 

The corruptness of the clergy has already been men- 
tioned. The main reason for England's long toleration 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER lOI 

of it is to be found in the clergy's enormous power. The 
more fundamental reason, however, and indeed the secret 
of this very power, is to be found in the too common 
conception of religion as a mere discipline by pains and 
penalties. In the clergy was vested the power to forgive 
sins and to remit the penalties of the hereafter. The 
sinner who confessed was bidden to do a certain penance, 
as the condition of receiving absolution ; the sinner who 
stayed away from confessional was haled before the eccle- 
siastical court and sentenced to a worse penance. The 
penance might be a fast, or a pilgrimage, or any one of 
countless methods of expiation ; but the commands of 
the church must be obeyed to the letter, or terrible tor- 
ments were the doom of the offender. If the church had 
confined this discipline to cases of vice and crime, there 
would have been far less cause for complaint, but it did 
not. The enemies of the church, and sometimes the 
enemies of its ministers, were treated as the enemies of 
God, and the church's most terrible weapon, excommu- 
nicatiouj was hurled at them. The mere possession of 
this weapon was a constant temptation to the clergy to 
foster the popular conception of the Deity as a God of 
Wrath ; and this conception (as has been dimly seen in 
the extracts already read) needed no fostering. It was 
partly this view of religion that gave the church its first 
firm grip upon English life, and though in the fourteenth 
century the church had ceased to command universal (or 
perhaps even general) respect, it was too late to shake it off. 
The foregoing is not intended as a full and fair descrip- 
tion of the mediaeval English Church. That church taught 
the gospel of Love as well as that of Wrath ; and even 



I02 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

with the latter it did much good to individuals, as well 
as much harm, for it used its power in a turbulent age 
to protect the weak against the strong, and to save the 
vicious from themselves. But the church's abuses of its 
power made more impression upon the literature of the 
fourteenth century than did its legitimate influence, and 
the darker side of the story is therefore of more present 
significance to us. It should, moreover, be especially 
studied by those who think of mediaeval religion as only 
a pure and beautiful mysticism, and by those who pessi- 
mistically bewail the loss of spirituality in the modern 
world. 

Resentment and revolt against the abuses of the church 
came to a head in Wyclif. He was an eminent Oxford 
scholar and theologian, for a time Master of Balliol Col- 
lege, and a center of the university's intellectual influence. 
In 1382, however, when he was past sixty years of age, 
he was expelled from the university because of his heret- 
ical teachings. He had attacked the greed of the church, 
advocating its disendowment (with extensive confiscation 
of its property) ; then he had assailed the several orders 
of friars, on account of their notorious corruptions ; and 
finally he had in effect declared open war upon the church 
by avowing and inculcating disbelief in the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, {i.e.^ the doctrine that the bread and 
wine used in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper are 
actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ, 
only the appearance of the original elements remaining). 
An attack upon this cardinal belief of the church was 
not merely a doctrinal dispute ; it was a matter of vital 
consequence, for the clergy knew that much of their power 



TH^ AGE OF CHAUCER IO3 

was due to the people's belief in their ability to perform 
this daily miracle ; and apart from that, the belief itself 
has a mystical charm for those who cherish it, so that an 
attack upon it is felt as a peculiarly impious sacrilege. 

Wyclif 's followers, who were known as Lollards, were 
active for a generation or more after their master's death 
(1384), and they never were altogether suppressed ; their 
agitation continued fitfully until it was merged in the 
greater Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. 
They were regarded as dangerous enemies of the nation, 
and many of them died the heretic's death at the stake. 
Gowned in long russet robes, their preachers wandered 
from town to town, finding audiences where they could, 
and spreading their doctrine in the face of threats and 
insults. Wyclif himself had been on some subjects a 
fanatic, whose opinions shock our judgment as often as 
they accord with it, and his followers inherited his fanati- 
cism without his great intelligence ; but there was much 
in them to admire. In holding that 'the rules of faith 
should be sought chiefly in the Bible (parts of which, if 
not all, Wyclif himself translated), and that clean living 
was worth more than ceremonies or sacraments, they 
were anticipating the great Reformation, and the opinion 
of the modern Protestant world. 

34. The Alliterative Poems. — The principal poets of the 
latter half of the fourteenth century may be roughly 
divided into two classes, the East and West Midland 
schools. The former, under the influence of court or 
university training, and by imitation of foreign models, 
attained a much higher proficiency in the poetic art than 
any of their English predecessors. Indeed Chaucer, 



I04 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

who was a London man, is felt to be almost a modern 
poet. The West Midland men, on the other hand, liv- 
ing in a district where the English spirit had received 
less of the French leaven, clung more to old forms 
and old ideas, and their work seems to us thoroughly 
mediaeval. 

Four poems, commonly known as Cleanness^ Patience^ 
Pearl, and Gawayne-and the Green Knight, have sur- 
vived from this period in a single manuscript, all in the 
same handwriting and the same West Midland dialect. 
It is usually assumed (though not yet proved) that all 
are by the same author, but who or what that author was 
we can only guess. All except Pearl are in the Old 
English metre, with the Old English system of alliter- 
ation, although Gawayne and the Green Knight makes 
some use of rime. Pearl is rimed throughout, and its 
metre is of a smoother and finer kind, as a specimen 
will show. The author has retained the essential princi- 
ples of the older verse, but was apparently experiment- 
ing with it. 

Cleanness is a didactic poem of 1812 lines. By means 
of a number of stories from the Old Testament, such as 
those of Sodom and Gomorrah, Belshazzar, and Nebu- 
chadnezzar, it shows the advantages of clean living and 
the fatal consequences of uncleanness. The following 
excerpts from the story of the flood (modernized) will 
show something of the character of the original : 

But then evils on earth ever increased 

And multiplied manifold amongst mankind, 

For the powerful people oppressed the weaker, 

So that the Man that made all was mightily enraged. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER IO5 

When he knew each country corrupt in itself, 

And the people strayed from the paths of right, 

Fell tempting anger touched his heart. 

Sorrowing like a man, he said these words : 

" I regret full much that ever I made man ; 

But I shall deliver and do away the dotards on earth. 

And banish from my creation all creatures of flesh, 

Both bird and fish and beast and man ; 

All shall down and be dead, and driven from the earth. 

That ever I set soul in ; and sorely it rues me 

That ever I made them ; but if I may, hereafter 

I shall watch and be wary their wickedness to stop." 



(Accordingly the deluge is determined on, and Noah is 
warned to build a *^ chest.") 

"Now, Noah," quoth our Lord, "are you all ready ? 
Have you stopped all the chinks in your chest with clay ? " 
"Yes, Lord, by your leave," said the man then ; 
"All is wrought after your word, as you lent me wit." 
" Enter in then," quoth He, "and take your wife with you, 
And your thrifty sons and their wives all three." 

It hardly need be pointed out that this is not in the 
spirit of modern religious feeling. The poem is, of course, 
profoundly reverential in intent, but the reverence is of 
the sort that might have been paid to a feudal superior,^ 
not to the Supreme Being of a spiritual religion. 

The highest mountains over the moor were dry then no more, 
But thereon flocked the folk, for fear of the Vengeance. 
The wild of the forest floated on the water. 
Some swam thereon, that thought to save themselves. 

1 In Patience^ line 51, the Deity is called " my lege lorde." 



I06 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Some struggled to the heights, — stared up to heaven, 

And ruefully with loud voice roared aloud for dread. 

Hares, harts also, run to the heights ; 

Bucks, badgers and bulls hastened to the banks. 

And all cried for care to the King of heaven. 

For succor from the Creator they cried, each one ; 

But that helped not the misery, for his mercy was passed, 

And all his pity departed, from the people that he hated. 

By that time to their feet the flood flowed and waxed : 

Then each man saw well that he needs must sink. 

Friends embraced and fell upon each other, 

To endure their doleful destiny and die all together. 

Lover looks on beloved, and taketh his leave. 

To end all at once, and for ever to part. 

Patience is very much like Cleanness, enforcing an 
appropriate moral by the story of Jonah, but it lays pro- 
portionally a little less stress on God's anger and a little 
more on his mercy. Gawayne and the Green Knight 
has already been mentioned as one of the best of the 
Arthurian romances ; but it differs from most poems 
of its class in being profoundly moral in spirit and in 
purpose. The difficulties that Gawayne encounters are 
temptations rather than dangers, and the reader is led 
to admire him more for his integrity than for his prowess. 
With some humor, and some elements of pathos, and an 
admirable vividness of natural description, it is altogether 
a delightful poem ; but, unfortunately, the great number 
of obsolete words in its vocabulary put it beyond the 
reach of most modern readers. 

Pearl is a touching lament over the loss of a child, 
probably the poet's infant daughter. It is largely alle- 
gorical. The poet tells that he was once the possessor 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 107 

of a pearl of surpassing beauty, but he lost it in the green 
grass in a lovely arbor. One day, when he had gone to 
the arbor to bewail the loss of his *' pearl," and was lying 
on the grass where it was buried, he fell asleep and 
dreamed that he saw the kingdom of heaven. His pearl 
was there, in the form of a beautiful maiden, and she 
told him of her happy state, comforted him in his afflic- 
tion, and explained to him some of the problems that 
had perplexed his mind. The religious spirit of the 
poem is markedly different from that of Cleanness and 
Patience, In Pearl we really find some of the beautiful 
spirituality for which we search so much of mediaeval 
literature in vain. The river of life, the crystal battle- 
ments of heaven, and the brilliant gems that adorn them 
impress us not as the vagaries of a materialistic fancy, 
but rather as the mystic symbols of faith and love. 
The Deity is a great king, but he reigns in a spiritual 
kingdom, and we are told to love him for his mercy, 
not merely to fear him for his wrath. The maiden 
says, for example : 

In Jerusalem was my Bridegroom slain, 

And rent on the rood by ruffians bold. 

All our bales to bear full fain, 

He took on himself our sorrows cold. 

His face was all with buffets flayn, 

That was so lovely to behold ; — 

Sinless himself, he suffered pain 

For the sins of us, the sheep of his fold. 

For us he let himself be sold, 

And nailed upon a rough-hewn beam ; 

As meek as a lamb that no plaint told, 

For us he died in Jerusalem. 



I08 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

By quoting other passages it might be shown that this 
poem is as superior to the others in artistic feUcity as it 
is different in rehgious spirit. It would obviously be 
possible to argue that Pearl and Cleanness could not 
have been written by the same author. They were 
certainly not written in the same mood ; but perhaps 
the difference is accounted for by the fact that one 
was a deliberate effort to teach certain practical truths, 
while the other was inspired by a grievous sense of 
personal loss. 

35. Piers Plowman. — The most remarkable production 
of what we have called the West Midland school was 
written by a man to whom tradition gives the name of 
William Langland. He is supposed to have been born 
at Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, about the year 
1332, and to have received the education of a *' clerk'' 
in some western monastery, perhaps the one at Great 
Malvern in Worcestershire. From his poem we know 
that he wore the clerical tonsure and garb, that he was 
a gaunt, stern-featured man, much given to melancholy 
musings, and that he was extremely poor. His poem is 
an elaborate allegory, giving a detailed picture of the life 
of the author's time, and an eloquent denunciation of its 
sins. The following extracts are modernized, but are 
intended to reproduce the spirit of the original as fairly 
as possible. 

(^Prologue, ) 

In a summer season, when soft was the sunshine, 
I dressed myself coarsely in shepherd's clothes, 
In habit of a hermit, unholy of works, 
And went wide in this world, wonders to hear. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER IO9 

But on a May morning, on Malvern Hills, 

There befel a strange chance, — enchantment I thought it ; — 

I was weary of wandering, and went me to rest 

Under a broad bank, by a burn's side ; 

And as I lay and leaned, and looked in the waters, 

I slumbered in a sleeping, it sounded so pleasantly. 

Then came to my mind a marvelous vision. 

That I was in a wilderness, wist I never where. 

As I looked into the East, on high to the sun, 

I saw a tower on the top of a hill, 

With a deep dale beneath, and a dungeon therein 

With deep ditches and dark, and dreadful of sight. 

A fair field full of folk found I there between. 

Of all manner of men, the mean and the rich, 

Working and wandering as the world requires. 



I saw pilgrims and palmers, pledging themselves 

To seek Saint James and saints at Rome. 

They went forth on their way with many wise tales, 

And got leave to lie, all their lives thereafter. 

I saw some that said they had sought saints : 

To each tale that they told, their tongue was tempered to 

lie. 
More than to tell truth, (so it seemed by their speech). 
Hordes of hermits, with hooked staves, 
Went to Walsingham ^ with their wenches following them ; 
Long-legged lubbers, that loth were to work. 
Clothed themselves in copes, to be known from other men. 
And made themselves hermits, so as to have their ease. 
I found there friars, all the four orders. 
Preaching to the people for their own profit, 
Closing the Gospel as they thought good. 



1 A shrine of the Virgin, in Norfolk, much visited by pilgrims. 



no EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

There preached a pardoner,^ as if he were a priest; 

He brought out a bull, sealed by the bishop, 

And said that he himself could absolve them all 

From violations of fast-days, or breaches of vows. 

The ignorant believed him, and liked his words well, 

And came up all kneeling to kiss his bulls ; 

He duped them with his indulgences, and dimmed their 

eyes, 
And reached out with his documents for their rings and 

brooches ; 
And thus they gave their gold to keep gluttons alive. 

Barons and burgesses and husbandmen also 

I saw in this assembly, as ye shall hear, 

Baxters and brewsters and butchers many, 

Woolen websters and weavers of linen. 

Tailors and tinkers, and tax-collectors. 

Masons and miners, and manv other crafts. 

Of all kinds of laborers that live there were some. 

Such as diggers and delvers, that do their deeds ill. 

And dawdle the livelong day, droning idle songs. 

Cooks and their kitchen-knaves cried *' hot pies, hot ! 

Good pigs and geese ; go dine, go ! " 

Taverners unto them told the same story; 

" White wine of Alsace and red wine from Gascony, 

From the Rhine and Rochelle, to digest the roast meat." 

All this saw I sleeping, and seven times more. 

The tower mentioned in line 14 is the Tower of Truth, 
and the dungeon in the deep dale is the Castle of Care. 
The ''fair field full of folk" is of course the world, and 
we naturally expect that the allegory wtII be developed 

1 Pardoners were persons commissioned by the church to sell indul- 
gences. They raised money partly by house-to-house peddling, partly 
in the open air, as here. The abuses of this traffic are notorious. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER III 

in narrative form, with the field and the tower and the 
castle for a scenic background. In fact, however, as we 
follow the succession of pictures that Langland puts 
before us, we lose sight of these landmarks altogether. 
He seems to have forgotten them himself. At the end 
of the Prologue, for example, we have what seems to be 
a picture of a London street, with the cooks and the 
tavern-keepers at their doors, touting for custom. Farther 
on in the poem, some of the people get into a quarrel, 
and they all hurry off to Westminster to get the king to 
decide it ; but after some satire upon the administration 
of justice at the capital, we are taken back again to " the 
field full of folk." The people are suffering much misery 
because of their sins, but Hope and Repentance come 
and speak comfortingly to them, and they all resolve to 
go off in search of St. Truth. (It does not seem to be 
remembered that he lives in the tower on the hill.) 

{Passus quintus de Visione.) 

A thousand of men then thronged together, 

Crying upward to Christ and his clean mother, 

To let grace go with them in search of Truth. 

But there was no wight so wise that knew the way thither, 

But they bustled like beasts over banks and hills, 

Till after long searching they saw at last a man 

Appareled as a palmer, in pilgrim's wise. 

He bore a staff, bound with a broad band 

Wound about it in the manner of woodbine. 

A bowl and a bag he bore by his side : 

Phials of holy water were fastened to his hat, 

Signs of Sinai, and shells from Galicia, 



112 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

And many a cross on his cloak, and keys of Rome, 

And the Vernicle in front, that men might know 

And see by his signs what shrines he had sought. 

The folk asked him first whence he had come. 

"From Sinai,'' he said, "and from Our Lord's sepulchre; 

In Bethlehem and in Babylon, — I have been in both; 

And in Armenia and Alexandria, and many other places. 

Ye may see by my signs that sit on my hat 

That I have walked full wide, in wet and in dry. 

And sought good saints, for my soul's health." 

" Canst tell of a saint that men call Truth ? 

Cduldst thou put us on the way to that person's dwelling ? " 

" Nay, so God help me," the holy man said ; 

" I never saw palmer, with pike nor with scrip. 

Asking for him before, till now in this place." 

Just at this juncture, Piers the Plowman, v^ho gives 
his name to the poem, makes his first appearance. He 
tells the people that he knows all about St. Truth, for 
he has been his faithful servant for fifty years ; and he 
will gladly show them the way to Truth's abode, after 
he has finished his day's ploughing. They accept his 
offer, but some wrangling which ensues is so noisy that 
the poet wakes from his sleep and the vision ends. 

This is the poem properly called The Vision of William 
concerning Piers the Plowman, Accounts of other visions 
follow it, making practically a single poem of twenty-three 
cantos ox passus ; and as the same character, Piers, appears 
in later visions, the whole collection is commonly known 
as Piers Plowman, One spirit pervades the whole — 
the spirit of a reformer, bitterly discontented with the 
world as he sees it, commending with rough but passion- 
ate eloquence his own peculiar gospel as a sort of social 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER II3 

panacea, yet evidently half hopeless of the issue after all. 
What Langland's gospel was is apparent from the extracts 
already given. The moral spirit of his Christianity was 
not utterly remote from that of the present time ; honesty 
and industry seem to be his cardinal virtues ; and the 
conception of society that suggested Piers the Plowman 
for the regenerator of the world had as much in common 
with modern as with mediaeval thought. 

There are many passages showing Langland's keen 
sympathy with the poor. The following may well be 
compared with the legend of Alexis : 

For he that beggeth or biddeth, unless he have need, 
He is false and a faitour, and defraudeth the needy, 
And beguileth the giver, taking against his will ; 
For he that giveth for God's love would not give willingly 
Save where he knew great need of his giving. 
And most merit in the men he is giving to. 
This is what Cato says, — '' cui des videto "; 
None knows, I ween, who is worthy to have. 
The most needy are our neighbors, if we look at them nar- 
rowly ; 
Such as prisoners in dungeons, and poor folk in cottages, 
Burdened with children, and the landlord's charges. 
What they save with their spinning they spend in house-hire, 
And in milk and meal for making porridge. 
To allay their little ones' longing for food. 
They themselves also suffer much hunger. 
And woe in the winter-time with waking a-nights 
To rise by the bed-side and rock the cradle, 
And with carding and combing and patching and washing. 
And rubbing and reeling, and peeling of rushes ; 
So that it is pity to read, or to write in rime 
The woe of these women that dwell in cottages, 



114 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

And of many other men, that much woe suffer, 

With both famine and thirst ; yet they put on a bold face, 

And are ashamed to beg or to show their need. 

The poem is so full of attacks upon the ecclesiastical 
system of the time that Langland has sometimes been 
called a Lollard, but this is a mistake. He was bitter 
against the abuses, but loyal to the essential doctrines of 
Romanism. In the twentieth pas sits Piers is tending a 
wounded man (that is, a sinner) whom Faith and Hope 
have forsaken : 

"Do not blame them," said Piers; "their presence would 
not avail, 

Nor any medicine on earth, to heal the man. 

Without the blood of a babe he may not be saved. 

And that babe must needs be born of a maid ; 

With the blood of that babe he must be anointed and bap- 
tized. 

And though he step and stand, he shall never be right 
strong 

Till he have eaten that babe and drunk his blood." 

Langland lived to be an old man, and his whole life, 
apparently, was dedicated to work upon this poem. He 
gave it to the world first in a shorter form, but after- 
wards, at intervals, issued two altered and expanded 
editions. No money was to be won by such labors, and 
Langland's satire upon the clergy must have deprived 
him of all chance of promotion in the church. The 
poem must, therefore, have been entirely a labor of 
love and conscience. 

36. Gower. — The most celebrated of the poets con- 
temporary with Chaucer was John Gower. His celeb- 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER II5 

rity, however, was not due to his genius, for his gift 
was less than that of either Langland or the author of 
Gawayne and the Green Knight ; it was due chiefly to 
the fact that he wrote in the East Midland dialect, and 
therefore could be read with ease after his greater con- 
temporaries had become wholly unintelligible. Moreover, 
he was a courtier and a poHshed gentleman, and there- 
fore was able to write the sort of poetry that was then 
in fashion, if not actually to set the fashion himself. 
Consequently, it was for many generations a common 
thing to bracket his name with Chaucer's,^ while his 
humble superiors were ignored. 

Gower was born about the year 1325, and died in 
1408. He was probably a rich man, and certainly a 
highly educated one. His three most considerable works 
are in three different languages ; the Vox Clamantis in 
Latin, the Speciihun Meditantis in French, and the Con- 
fessio Amantis in English. Apparently he wrote with 
the same ease in all three, although in one of his minor 
French poems he apologizes for slips : 

Al Universite de tout le monde 
Johan Gower ceste balade envoie, 
Et si jeo nai de francois la faconde, 
Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie. 
Jeo sui Englois. . . ? 

1 E.g.^ Skelton, Garlande of Laurell, 1. 387 : 

And as I thus sadly amonge them avysid, 

I saw Gower, that first garnisshed our Englysshe rude, 

And Maister Chaucer, that nobly enterprysed 

How that our Englysshe myght fresshely be ennewed. 

'^ " To the University of all the world John Gower sends this bal- 
lade; and if I have not a good French style, pardon my shortcomings ; 
I am English." 



Il6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

And his Latin, of course, was neither elegant nor cor- 
rect ; but that was less his own fault than the habit of 
his time, for Ciceronian Latin had long been forgotten. 
The Confessio Amantis begins as follows : 

Of hem that writen us to-fore 
The bokes dwelle,^ and we therfore 
Ben taught of that was writen tho.^ 
Forthy ^ good is, that we also 
In oure time amonge us here 
Do write of-newe ^ some matere 
Ensampled of ^ the olde wise, 
So that it might in suche a wise, 
Whan we be dede and elles-where, 
Beleve ^ to the worldes ere 
In time comend '^ after this. 
But for men sain, and sothe it is, 
That who that al of wisdom writ 
It dulleth ofte a mannes wit 
To hem that shall it alday rede. 
For thilke ^ cause, if that ye rede, 
I wolde go the middel wey 
And write a boke betwene the twey ^ 
Somewhat of lust,^^ somewhat of lore, 
That of the lasse or of the more 
Som man may like of that I write, 
And for that fewe men endite^^ 
In our Englisshe, I thenke ^^ make 
A boke for king Richardes sake. 
To whom belongeth my legeaunce 
With all min hertes obeisaunce, 
In all that ever a lege man 
Unto his king may done or can. 

1 Are still extant. ^ then. ^ therefore. ^ anew. ^ modeled 
upon. ^ remain. '^ coming. ^ that. ^ two. ^^ pleasure. 

11 write. 12 intend to. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER II/ 

In pursuance of this plan Gower has written a didactic 
prologue, in a thousand lines or more, to instruct the 
reader, while the rest of the poem, — some thirty or 
forty thousand lines, — is evidently intended to entertain 
him. The prologue is a criticism of the poet's own time, 
just as Piers Plowman is ; but it is written in a politer 
dialect, in a metre which (under French influence) had 
begun to be something like that of modern poets, and 
from the point of view of a courtier, scholar, and landed 
proprietor. Gower laments the corruption and decay of 
the church, which 

Causeth for to bringe 
This newe secte of lollardie 
And also many an heresie 
Among the clerkes in hem selve. 

He inveighs especially against the ambition and avarice 
which he says have driven out the simple humility and 
charity of the olden time, and urges that there can be no 
hope for the world so long as the whole human race is 
divided against itself. Gower was an earnest and fearless 
thinker, and however flippantly we may speak of him as 
a poet, he is entitled to high esteem as a man, and as a 
sober student of his times. Chaucer, in dedicating his 
Troilus and Criseyde^ said : 

O moral Gower, this book I directe 
To thee ; 

and the epithet has clung to Gower's name ever since. 

The rest of the Confessio Amantis is a tediously typi- 
cal illustration of the influence of the French literature 
of chivalry. The poet represents himself as a faithful 



Il8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

though not faultless servant of Love, coming to the court 
of Venus and praying for relief. Venus appoints a 
person called Genius to be his father confessor, and the 
poet kneels to him as a sinner to a priest of the church. 
Genius asks him searching questions about his offenses 
against the laws of Love, and tells a long story to illus- 
trate the importance of each law. The telling of these 
stories is of course the main purpose of the poem, but 
the whole collection is unified by the setting. The court 
of Venus and Cupid, the laws of Love, the penitent 
offender against those laws, and most of the rest of the 
^^ machinery " of the poem were common conventions 
in French poetry and (as we shall see in a later 
chapter) were destined to become common enough in 
England. 

A single example of Gower's method will suffice. Dis- 
obedience, which springs from pride, is one of the com- 
mon offenses against the law. The confessor explains 
what it is, the lover confesses his guilt, and the confessor 
illustrates by the following story the advantages of obedi- 
ence and humility : 

There was once a worthy knight, Florent, a nephew 
of the Emperor. This knight had once killed a certain 
Branchus, and the friends of the latter waylaid Florent and 
took him to their castle as a prisoner. There the grand- 
mother of Branchus came to him and offered him his lib- 
erty on this condition, that by a certain day he should 
bring her the answer to a question which she would put to 
him ; he must freely agree, however, that in the event of 
his failure they might put him to death. Florent agreed, 
and the question was put : " what do all women most 
desire ? " 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 1 19 

Florent went home and tried in vain to get a satisfactory 
answer. At the time appointed he was returning to his 
death, when there met him a hideously loathsome old 
woman, who promised to save him on condition that he 
would marry her. Reluctantly he assented, for life is 
sweet, and he thought he could hide her where no man 
should see her, and she must soon die. So she told him 
the right answer to the question, which was, "to be sov- 
ereign of man's love." The answer was accepted by the 
household of Branchus, and Florent was set free ; and being 
an honorable knight, he kept his word to the hag. After 
the ceremony, they retired together for the night, but 
Florent persistently turned his back on his wife, in disgust 
and despair. At last, in obedience to her urgent entreaty, 
he looked at her, and found her only eighteen years old, 
and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. As he 
started to embrace her, she checked him, and asked 
whether he preferred thenceforth to have her young and 
beautiful by day, or by night ; for he must choose between 
the two. He begged her to choose for him, saying she 
was his mistress and he put himself entirely under her 
direction. At that she assured him that she would keep 
her youth and beauty at all times. She explained that she 
was a king's daughter, and that her stepmother, by a wicked 
enchantment, had doomed her to endure the loathsome dis- 
guise of a hag until she should win the love and sovereignty 
of the most famous knight in the world ; which she had 
now done. 

This story, like many others in the poem, is good in 
itself ; but it owes nothing to Gower's telling. He is 
destitute of the charm that we look for in a poet, and is 
insufferably prolix. Even by the few lines that have 
been quoted from the prologue, the reader can see that 
thirty thousand lines of Gower are too much. 



CHAPTER VII 
CHAUCER 

37. The Life of Chaucer. — Geoffrey Chaucer was the 
son of John Chaucer, a London vintner. The date of 
his birth is unknown. In certain documents relating 
to a legal proceeding in which the poet's father was 
concerned, John Chaucer was described as being in 
1324 not yet fourteen years of age, and as being in 
1328 still unmarried. These facts fix the earliest limit 
that can possibly be considered for the date of the poet's 
birth. A later limit is suggested by some legal proceed- 
ings in 1386, in which he is described as ^*of the age of 
forty years and more." If this was correct, and if the 
phrase (like "forty odd") means "more than forty and 
less than fifty," then Chaucer could not have been born 
before 1336. On the other hand, the later facts of 
Chaucer's life, and many remarks in his poems about 
his old age, tempt us to assign as early a date as pos- 
sible for his birth. It cannot have been much later than 
1336, and it may have been a little earlier. 

The earliest known mention of the poet is dated 1357. 
It is found in the household accounts of the wife of 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, one of the sons of Edward 
III. These accounts had been used to bind a manu- 
script of some fifteenth-century poems, and were only 
recently discovered in the British Museum. They show, 

120 



CHAUCER 121 

among other things, that in April, 1357, ^^e Countess 
spent seven shilKngs for a suit of clothes for Geoffrey 
Chaucer. This, with other evidence of similar character, 
shows that the poet was in his youth in the service of 
Lionel's family, doubtless as a page. Such a position 
was not of a menial nature. It was one which might 
well be coveted by a gentleman's son, and it secured for 
Chaucer a gentleman's education and training. 

A little later the royal accounts show that Chaucer 
served in the wars in France and was taken prisoner, 
for the king paid something for his ransom. Still later, 
other documents show that pensions were paid to him, 
sometimes in money, sometimes in allowances of wine 
from the royal cellars. As he rose in the world he was 
found to be a man of skill and judgment in diplomacy, 
and was sent on several important missions to France 
and to Italy. He also held offices of trust and dignity 
at home. For twelve years he was Controller of the 
Customs at the port of London ; he was a member of 
Parliament in 1386 ; was Clerk of the King's Works in 
1389 ; and was a foresfer of the Earl of March in 1390. 
He was married and had at least one son. He had his 
ups and downs in worldly prosperity, however, according 
to the capricious chances of royal favor ; but he was a 
man of eminent attainments apart from literature, and 
his character won the affectionate regard of many of his 
contemporaries. He died in 1400. 

The foregoing are by no means all the known facts of 
Chaucer's life, but they will serve to illustrate the ways 
by which scholars have obtained information about him, 
and to explain his position in the history of mediaeval 



122 EARLY ENGLISH .LITERATURE 

literature. With the greatest hterary genius that Eng- 
land had yet produced, and the life and environment 
that fell to Chaucer's lot, his literary position seems one 
that might in great part have been predicted. He saw 
the same world that Langland saw, but from a very dif- 
ferent point of view. He was familiar with the dreams 
of the romancers as well as with those of the religious 
mystics, but he was a sagacious man of the world, 
with a practical business sense. He loved a good story 
— loved it all the better, perhaps, if it was touched 
with the satirical spirit of the ipoipula.r fadliatix ; but his 
court training tended to make him one of the aristocrats 
of literary art, and his travels in Italy taught him what- 
ever it was possible to learn of literary finish, in the land 
where the Renaissance was already in progress. 

38. Chaueer*s French Period. — We have seen in an 
earlier chapter how some of the mediaeval romancers 
infused into their fantasies some of the spirit of mediae- 
val religion. There was another kind of romantic poetry 
which owed much to the influence of religious literature, 
but in a different way. It will be remembered that one 
peculiar manifestation of the mediaeval religious spirit 
was a fancy for detecting in things material an image 
of things spiritual. This fancy led to a profusion of 
allegorical religious literature, of which the Bestiary is a 
crude example, and Peaid a much finer one ; but a sim- 
ilar fancy also took hold of the courtly romancers, and 
led to the sort of poetry commonly called ^' court alle- 
gory." This literary species can best be illustrated by 
an abstract of part of the Romaunt of the Rose, a 
French poem of the thirteenth century. 



CHAUCER 123 

The poet has a dream in which, walking along a river- 
bank in the month of May, he comes upon a beautiful 
garden surrounded by a high wall. On the. outside of this 
wall are paintings and sculptures representing such persons 
as Churlishness, Sorrow, Age, and Poverty. (As the gar- 
den is Love's domain, the fact that these figures are on the 
outside seems to indicate that romantic love is an entertain- 
ment for only those who are well-born, happy, young, and 
rich.) The poet at last finds a gate kept by the porter 
Idleness, who opens for him. In the garden is the God of 
Love, with his attendant lords and ladies. Beauty, Riches, 
Gladness, Courtesy, and many others. The poet avoids 
them for a time, and wanders about the garden till, he 
comes to a beautiful rose-bush. One of the roses on this 
bush attracts him so that he cannot leave the place, but 
lingers there smelling of it and longing to pluck it ; and 
while he is so engaged. Love (who has been watching him 
all the time) shoots his arrows at him, and demands his 
surrender. The poet thereupon kneels before the god with 
joined hands, and does him homage and becomes his 
"man." Love demands security, and the poet offers his 
heart, which the god accepts and locks up with a little 
golden key. He then delivers to the poet a long lecture on 
the statute laws of his kingdom, which are a codification of 
the whole duty of lovers. The lover must be lean and 
languishing, must be sleepless with love-longing, courteous 
of speech, reticent about his love, except with some trust- 
worthy confidant, untiring in his devotion, liberal with 
gifts, and so forth ; but there is nothing in the statutes to 
suggest that he ought to be pure of heart. After the lec- 
ture the poet was free to approach the rose-bush if he 
could, but there were difficulties in the way. Fair Recep- 
tion, Pity, Frankness, and others, tried to encourage and 
help him, but Reason, Shame, Chastity, and other malig- 
nant enemies of Love, conspired to keep him away. Some 
of them built a high wall around the rose-bush ; and the 



124 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

rest of the poem is a narrative of the poet's long frustrated 
efforts to pluck the rose. 

This poem is dainty in treatment, with every appear- 
ance of earnest devotion, on the part of the author, to 
the god of his idolatry ; but from the foregoing abstract, 
and from what has been said of the early romances of 
chivalry, it will be evident that it was really written in 
a spirit of elegant trifling, and that its fundamental con- 
ception of life was thoroughly immoral. It was one of 
the most popular books known in the fourteenth century. 
One of Chaucer's first works was a translation of it, 
and we find evidences of its influence upon almost all- 
Chaucer's contemporaries. Even in Pearl the bereaved 
father falls asleep and dreams that he is walking along 
a river. It was therefore not strange that Chaucer's 
earliest original poetry should bear the same stamp. 
But while Chaucer imitates the allegorical form of the 
Romaunt of the Rose, with its numberless personifica- 
tions, its dream device, its affectation of devotion to 
Love and his laws, its conventional background of river- 
side. May-time, and the song of the birds, and all the 
rest of the *^ machinery " of the poem, he nevertheless 
maintains toward the idea of love, or whatever happens 
to be his subject, an attitude of healthy common sense. 
He is sometimes coarse ; but he did not wrap up sensu- 
ality in a thin veil of mysticism, and he is often least 
immoral where he is most indelicate. 

Two of Chaucer's minor poems, the Complaint to Pity, 
and the Book of the Duchess, may be mentioned as illus- 
trating his French period. The former expresses the 
sorrows of an unsuccessful lover, in the conventional 



CHAUCER 125 

French way. The lover is described as one who has 
long sought Pity, for the purpose of presenting to her a 
bill of complaint against Cruelty ; as if Pity held a court of 
justice, in which the malicious enemies of Love might be 
brought to trial. He finds that Pity is dead, and his suit 
is therefore vain. The Book of the Duchess is a lament 
for the death of the Duchess Blanche, wife of John of 
Gaunt. Chaucer describes himself as falling asleep over 
a book, and dreaming that he lies in bed on a May 
morning, listening to the song of the birds. He gets 
up and walks out into the woods. There he finds a 
man dressed in black (evidently John of Gaunt) who 
tells him the story of his love, his wooing, and his be- 
reavement. At the end of the recital the poet wakes, 
and finds himself lying in his room with the book in his 
hand. The widower's story is told in the French man- 
ner, with a number of actual borrowings from the 
Romaunt of the Rose ; but it is wedded love that is 
celebrated, and the moral spirit of the poem owes 
nothing to the school of Chrestien of Troyes. 

39. Chaucer's Later Poems. — Chaucer's French period 
is usually said to have been followed by an Italian period, 
and this in turn by an English period ; but the value of 
this triple distinction is questionable. His later works, 
composed after he had traveled in Italy and become 
acquainted with the writings of Dante, Petrarch, and 
Boccaccio, show a newly awakened genius for story-tell- 
ing, for the portrayal of character, for the observation 
and realistic description of all phases of life, — and in 
short for most of the essentials of poetry. Some of his 
later poems are more directly traceable than others to 



126 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Italian influence ; but the vital fact about them all is 
that they were comparatively free from the influence of 
French literature, and as Chaucer escaped from that influ- 
ence he was escaping from the shackles of mediae valism. 

His longest single poem, Ti^oihis and Cressida, is 
commonly counted as belonging to his Italian period, 
and it was indeed based upon a poem of Boccaccio ; but 
Chaucer's treatment of the old story is as thoroughly 
English, and as thoroughly his own, as most of his later 
work. The story is of the Trojan hero's love for the 
faithless Cressida, who swears eternal fidelity, but soon 
deserts him for the Greek Diomed. The love of Troilus 
is intense and largely animal, like the love of heroes in 
the older romances, and Cressida's acceptance of it is 
after the old romantic pattern, furtive and dishonorable ; 
but Chaucer presents things as they are, sometimes with 
brutal frankness, but never with any obliquity of moral 
vision. In a typical French romance the heroine is 
wooed, and after long-continued coyness relents ; in 
Chaucer's poem she is tempted, and after some resistance 
falls. Moreover, the actions of both hero and heroine 
are always prompted by intelligible motives. They are 
a man and a woman, not puppets of romance. 

The Legend of Good Women is an excellent instance 
of Chaucer's new way of using old material. It is a col- 
lection of tales from classical mythology, introduced by 
a prologue in something like the French manner ; but 
both the prologue and the tales themselves are stamped 
with Chaucer's individual imprint. The prologue tells 
how Chaucer, after a ramble through the fields on a 
beautiful day in May, fell asleep in an arbor, and dreamed 



CHAUCER 127 

that he was walking in a meadow and Ustening to the 
song of the birds. The God of Love came up, leading 
by the hand Alcestis, the pattern of wifely virtue and 
devotion. The god addresses Chaucer wrathfully, for 
(he says) the poet has translated the Rojnatmt of the 
Rose and written the story of Cressida, and both these 
works tend to make men think lightly of Love and of his 
law.^ Why could he not have written of some good 
woman, instead of the false and wicked ones? The god 
seems disposed to deal harshly with the poet, but Alcestis 
graciously intercedes* for him and obtains his pardon. 
The pardon, however, is granted only on condition of his 
now writing a book about women who, whether wives or 
maidens, have shown lifelong devotion and fidelity. The 
poet wakes and proceeds to perform the condition. 

One curious instance of Chaucer's common-sense real- 
ism, from the body of the Legeiid, may serve as a typical 
specimen. He is telling the story of Dido. In Vergil's 
JEneid, when the faithful Achates was sent to the fleet 
for young Ascanius, Venus induced her son to take the 
boy's place ; and thus Cupid was enabled to instil his 
poison into the breasts of ^neas and Dido. Here is 
Chaucer's version : 

Repaired is this Achates again, 
And Eneas ful blisful is and fain 
To seen his yonge sone Ascanius. 
But natheless, our autour telleth us 
That Cupido, that is the god of love, 
At preyere of his moder, hye above, 

1 So far as the Romaimt qf the Rose is concerned, this refers to parts 
of the poem not covered by the abstract in the preceding section. 



128 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Hadde the lyknes of the child y-take,^ 
This noble quene enamoured to make 
On Eneas ; but, as of that scripture, 
Be as be may, I make of hit no cure. 

The last lines mean, '' as for that version, be as be may, 
I care not for it ; " and accordingly the story proceeds 
on the assumption that the boy who came to Dido's arms 
was really Ascanius. 

40. The Canterbury Tales. — As Chaucer grew older, his 
humor and his poetic genius seemed to develop steadily. 
After completing eight tales for the Legend of Good 
Women, he left the work unfinished and devoted himself 
to the Canterbury Tales ; and it is easy to see why he 
did so. The latter work was also a collection of stories 
introduced by a prologue, but the scheme of the work 
was much better suited to the poet's ripened powers than 
was that of the Legend. In the prologue of the later 
work Chaucer presents a company of pilgrims, drawn 
from all classes in society, meeting by chance at an inn 
on the road to Canterbury, and making their pilgrimage 
to the shrine together. To relieve the journey, they 
agree to tell stories on the way. The Prologue describes 
the pilgrims at the inn, and starts them on their way to 
Canterbury; and the tales follow, each told by some 
member of the company. This scheme brought all 
Chaucer's powers into play. One of the pilgrims is a 
knight, and his story is naturally a romance of chivalry ; 
another is a nun, who tells the legend of a saint, full 
of the spirit of mediaeval asceticism ; another is a hearty 
young priest, who tells a tale of the Cock and the Fox 

1 taken. 



CHAUCER 129 

in the spirit of the early Reynard romances ; a brawny, 
brutish miller tells a comic and scurrilous /<:z^//<^/^ ; and, 
in general, as all sorts of men and women are introduced 
in the Prologue, so the Tales themselves present all kinds 
of subjects, from love to war and from earth to heaven. 
There is much trenchant satire in Chaucer's character- 
izations. He is as severe as Langland upon the abuses 
that were common in the church, but his method is 
very different from Langland's. The latter, for exam- 
ple, keeps attacking the four orders of friars, exposing 
their wickedness and declaiming against it and them; 
Chaucer's way is rather to present an individual friar, 
and make him appear both odious and ridiculous. His 
satire is personal where Langland's is institutional. He 
hated the friars more because they were contemptible 
men than because they were a menace to society. He 
was a literary artist, not a reformer. An excellent speci- 
men of his method is found in the Summoner s Tale, 
which tells how a friar on his begging rounds came to a 
hospitable house where he had often before had filling 
dinners and ogled the good man's wife. 

So long he wente, hous by hous, til he 

Cam til an hous ther he was wont to be 

Refresshed moore than in an hundred placis ; 

Syk lay the goode man whos that the place is ; 

Bedrede ^ upon a couche lowe he lay. 

^' Deus hie r^ quod he, "O Thomas, freend, good day ! " 

Seyde this frere, curteisly and softe. 

"Thomas," quod he, "God yelde^ yow! ful ofte 

Have I upon this bench faren ful weel ; 

1 bedridden. 2 reward. 



I30 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Heere have I eten many a myrie meel ; " 
And fro the bench he droof awey the cat, 
And leyde adoun his potente -^ and his hat, 
And eek his scrippe, and sette hym softe adoun. 

Chaucer's best comic creation is the Wife of Bath. 
She is middle-aged, stout, and jovially healthy, and wins 
ready forgiveness for most of her shortcomings by her 
breezy frankness in confessing them. Before she begins 
her tale she gives the company a garrulous sketch of her 
own life, and even Shakespeare's Falstaff could hardly 
reveal himself better. Some extracts from her discourse 
will perhaps give a fairer impression of Chaucer's ver- 
satility than any other single passage could give. It 
must be remembered, however, that a great poet is fully 
known only w^hen all his works are read. Chaucer's 
tragic power, for example, is hardly suggested in the 
excerpts which follow. 

Chaucer's pronunciation was very different from ours, 
and the melody of his verse, which is often exquisite, 
cannot be appreciated without a knowledge of at least 
one of the differences. In the following extracts a grave 
accent is used where the letter e (now silent) had in 
Chaucer's speech a syllabic value. The word *' telle," 
for example, should have the final vowel lightly sounded, 
somewhat like the a in ''Ella." The presence in Chaucer's 
language of a great number of words with the letter e thus 
pronounced enabled the poet to secure a certain fluency 
of style which is now almost impossible. A striking 
illustration of this fact may be seen in Chaucer's line : 
As thikke as motes in the sonne-beem. 
1 staff. 



CHAWCER 131 

Two later poets imitated this line. Milton wrote : 
As the gay motes that people the sun-beams ; 

and Dryden wrote : 

Thick as the motes that twinkle in the sun. 

It is clear that Middle English was somewhat inferior 
to our modern speech in terseness and vigor. It is 
easier for us to write compactly than it was for Chau- 
cer ; but it was easier for him to write with a melodious 
fluency. 

{The Prologe of the Wyves Tale of Bathe ^ 

Now, sire, now wol I telle forth my tale. 
As evere moote I drinken wyn or ale, 
195 I shal seye sooth of housbondes that I hadde. 
As thre of hem were goode, and two were badde. 

But, Lord Crist ! whan that it remembreth me 
470 Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee. 

It tikleth me aboute myn herte ^ roote ! 

Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote ^ 

That I have had my world, as in my time. 

But Age, alias ! that al wole envenyme, 
475 Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith, — 

Lat go, fare w^el, the devel go therwith ! 

The flour is goon, ther is namoore to telle, 

The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle ; 

But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde.^ 
480 Now wol I tellen of my fourthe housbonde. 

1 heart's. ^ good. ^ try. 



132 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

495 He deyde whan I cam fro Jerusalem, 

And lith y-grave ^ under the roode-beem,^ 

Al^ is his tombe noght so curyus * 

As was the sepulcre of hym Daryus, 

Which that Apelles wroghte subtilly ; 
500 It nys but wast to burye hym preciously. 

Lat hym fare wel, God geve his soule reste, 

He is now in his grave and in his cheste ! 
Now of my iifthe housbonde wol I telle. 

God lete hise soule nevere come in helle ! 
505 And yet was he to me the mooste shrewe ; ^ 

That feel I on my ribbes al-by-rewe.^ 

[But] thogh he hadde me bet '' on every bon, 

He koude wynne agayn my love anon. 

I trowe I loved hym beste for that he 

Was of his love daungerous ^ to me. 
5^5 We wommen han, if that I shal nat lye, 

In this matere a queynte fantasye ; 

Wayte ! what thing we may nat lightly have, 

Ther after wol we crie al day and crave. 

Forbede us thyng, and that desiren we ; 
520 Preesse on us faste and thanne wol we fie. 

525 My fifthe housbonde, God his soule blesse ! 
Which that I took for love, and no richesse, 
He somtyme was a clerk of Oxenford, 
And hadde left scole and wente at hom to bord 
With my gossib,^ dwellynge in oure toun ; 

530 God have hir soule, hir name was Alisoun. 
She knew my herte, and eek my privetee, 
Bet^^ than oure parisshe preest, as moot I thee.^^ 

1 buried. 2 beam bearing a crucifix' in church. ^ although. 

^ elaborate. ^ ill-natured. ^ all in a row. ^ beaten. ^ niggardly, 
undemonstrative. ^ crony. i^ better. ^^ thrive. 



CHAUCER 133 

And so bifel that ones in a Lente, 

So often tymes I to my gossyb wente, — 

545 For evere yet I loved to be gay, 

And for to walke in March, Averill and May, 
Fro hous to hous to heere sondry talys, — 
That Jankyn clerk, and my gossyb dame Alys 
And I myself into the feeldes wente. 

550 Myn housbonde was at London al that Lente ; 
I hadde the bettre leyser for to pleye. 
And for to se, and eek for to be seye ^ 
Of lusty folk. What wiste I wher my grace 
Was shapen for to be, or in what place ? 

555 Therfore I made my visitaciouns 
To vigilies ^ and to processiouns. 
To prechyng eek, and to thise pilgrimages. 
To pleyes of myracles, and to mariages. 
And wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes.^ 

560 Thise wormes, ne thise motthes, ne thise mytes 
Upon my peril frete * hem never-a-deel.^ 
And wostow^ why ? For they were used weel. 

Now wol I tellen forth what happed me. 
I seye that in the feeldes walked we, 

565 Till trewely we hadde swich daliaunce, 
This clerk and I, that of my purveiance ^ 
I spak to hym, and seyde hym how that he, 
If I were wydwe, sholde wedde me ; 
For certeinly, — I sey for no bobance,^ — 

570 Yet was I nevere withouten purveiance 
Of mariage, nof othere thynges eek. 
I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek 
That hath but oon hole for to sterte to, 
And if that faille thanne is al y-do. 

575 I bar hym on honde ^ he hadde enchanted me, — 

1 seen. 2 wakes. ^ stockings (or perhaps petticoats). * eat. 
^ not at all. ^ knowest thou. "^ i.e., by way of provision for the 
future. 8 boast. ^ accused him. 



134 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

My dame taughte me that soutiltee/ — 
And eek I seyde, I mette ^ of hym al nyght, 
He wolde han slayn me as I lay upright,^ 
And al my bed was ful of verray blood ; 

5S0 But yet I hope that he shal do me good, 

For blood bitokeneth gold, as me was taught ; 
And al was fals, I dremed of it right naught. 
But I folwed ay my dames loore. 
As wel of this as of othere thynges moore. 

585 But now, sire, — lat me se, — what I shal seyn ? 
A ha ! by God, I have my tale ageyn. 

Whan that my fourthe housbonde was on beere ^ 
I weepte algate^ and made sory cheere, 
As wyves mooten,^ for it is usage, 

590 And with my coverchief covered my visage ; 
But, for that I was purveyed of a make,^ 
I wepte but smal, and that I undertake ! 

To chirche was myn housbonde born a-morwe ^ 
With neighebores, that for hym maden sorwe, 

595 And Jankyn, oure clerk, was oon of tho. 

As help me God, whan that I saugh hym go 
After the beere, me thoughte he hadde a paire 
Of legges and of feet so clene and faire, 
That al myn herte I gaf unto 'his hoold. 

What sholde I seye, but at the monthes ende 
This joly clerk, Jankyn, that was so hende,^ 
Hath wedded me with greet solempnytee, 
630 And to hym gaf I all the lond and fee, 
That evere was me geven ther-bifoore ; 
But afterward repented me ful soore. 
He nolde suffre nothyng of my list ; 
By God, he smoot me ones on the lyst,^^ 

1 subtilty. 2 dreamed. ^ on my back. * bier. ^ to be sure. 
^ must. " spouse. ^ on the morrow. ^ agreeable. '^^ ear. 



CHAUCER 135 

•635 For that I rente out of his book a leef, 
That of the strook myn ere wax al deef. 

But now to purpos why I tolde thee 

That I was beten for a book, par dee. 

Upon a nyght Jankyn, that was oure sire, 

Redde on his book, as he sat by the fire, 
715 Of Eva first, that for hir wikkednesse 

Was al mankynde broght to wrecchednesse; 

For which that Jesus Crist hymself was slayn. 

That boghte us with his herte blood agayn. 

Lo, heere expres of womman may ye fynde, 
720 That womman was the los of al mankynde. 

Tho redde he me how Sampson loste hise heres ; 

Slepynge, his lemman ^ kitte it with hir sheres ; 

Thurgh which tresoun loste he bothe hise eyen. 

Tho redde he me, if that I shal nat lyen, 
725 Of Hercules and of his Dianyre, 

That caused hym to sette hymself afyre. 

And whan I saugh he wolde nevere fyne^ 
To reden on this cursed book al nyght, 

790 Al sodeynly thre leves have I plyght^ 

Out of his book, right as he radde, and eke 
I with my fest so took hym on the cheke. 
That in oure fyr he fil bakward adoun; 
And he up stirte as dooth a wood * leoun, 

795 And with his fest he smoot me on the heed, 
That in the floor I lay as I were deed ; 
And whan he saugh how stille that I lay. 
He was agast and wolde han fled his way, 
Til atte ^ laste out of my swogh I breyde.^ 

800 " O hastow slayn me, false theef ? '' I seyde ; 
" And for my land thus hastow mordred me ? 

1 sweetheart, 2 g^ase, ^ plucked, * mad, ^ at the, ^ awgke. 



136 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Er I be deed, yet wol I kisse thee." 

And neer he cam, and kneled faire adoun. 
And seyde, " Deere suster Alisoun ! 

805 As help me God, I shal thee nevere smyte. 
That I have doon it is thyself to wyte,^ 
Forgeve it me, and that I thee biseke ; '* 
And yet, eft-soones, I hitte hym on the cheke. 
And seyde, ^^Theef ! thus muchel am I wreke.^ 

810 Now wol I dye, I may no lenger speke.'' 
But atte laste, with muchel care and wo. 
We fille acorded by us selven two. 
He gaf me al the bridel in myn hond. 
To han the governance of hous and lond, 

815 And of his tonge, and of his hond also. 

And made hym brenne his book anon right tho ; 

And whan that I hadde geten unto me 

By maistrie al the soveraynetee, — 

And that he seyde, " Myn owene trewe wyf, 

820 Do as thee lust to terme^ of al thy lyf ; 

Keepe thyn honour, and keepe eek myn estaat," — 
After that day we hadden never debaat. 
God helpe me so, I was to hym as kynde 
As any wyf from Denmark unto Ynde, 

825 And also trewe, and so was he to me. 
I prey to God, that sit in magestee. 
So blesse his soule for his mercy deere. 
Now wol I seye my tale, if ye wol heere. 

The Frere lough ^ whan he hadde herd al this ; 
830 "Now, dame," quod he, "so have I joye or blis. 
This is a long preamble of a tale." 
And whan the Somonour ^ herde the Frere gale, 
"Lo," quod the Somonour, " Goddes armes two! 
A frere wol entremette ^ him evere-mo. 

1 blame. ^ avenged. ^ the end, * laughed. ^ Summoner, 
a kind of bailiff. ^ intrude. 



CHAUCER 137 

835 Lo, goode men, a flye, and eek a frere, 

Wol falle in every dysshe and eek mateere. 
What spekestow of * preambulacioun ' ? 
What ? amble, or trotte, or pees, or go sit doun ! 
Thou lettest^ oure disport in this manere." 

840 "Ye, woltow so, sire Somonour ? " quod the Frere ; 
" Now, by my feith ! I shal, er that I go, 
Telle of a somonour swich a tale or two 
That alle the folk shal laughen in this place." 
" Now, elles, Frere, I bishrewe thy face ! " 

845 Quod this Somonour, " and I bishrewe me 
But if I telle tales, two or thre. 
Of freres, er I come to Sidyngborne, 
That I shal make thyn herte for to morne. 
For wel I woot thy pacience is gon." 

850 Our Hooste cride, " Pees ! and that anon ; " 
And seyde, " Lat the womman telle hire tale ; 
Ye fare as folk that dronken ben of ale. 
Do, dame, telle forth youre tale, and that is best." 
"Al redy, sire," quod she, "right as yow lest; 

855 If I have licence of this worthy Frere." 

"Yis, dame," quod he, "tel forth, and I wol heere." 

Here endeth the Wyf of Bathe hir Prologe a?id bigynneih 

hir tale. 

In tholde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, 
Of which that Britons speken greet honour. 
All was this land fulfild of fairye.^ 

860 The elf queene with hir joly compaignye 
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede. 
This was the olde opinion as I rede, — 
I speke of manye hundred yeres ago, — 
But now kan no man se none elves mo, 

865 For now the grete charitee and prayeres 

1 hinderest. ^ troops of fairies. 



138 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Of lymytours/ and othere hooly freres, 

That serchen every lond and every streem, 

As thikke as motes in the sonne beem, — 

Blessynge halles, chambres, kichenes, boures, 
870 Citees, burghes, castels, hye toures, 

Thropes,^ bernes, shipnes,^ dayeryes, — 

This maketh that ther been no fairyes ; 

For ther as wont to walken was an elf, 

Ther walketh now the lymytour hymself, 
875 In undermeles^ and in morwenynges, 

And seyth his matyns and his hooly thynges 

As he gooth in his lymytacioun.^ 

Wommen may go saufly up and doun ; 

In every bussh or under every tree, 
880 Ther is noon oother incubus but he, 

And he ne wol doon hem non dishonour. 

(The tale then tells how one of Arthur's knights, being 
under sentence of death for a violent crime, was promised 
his liberty if he would, within a twelvemonth and a day, 
tell the queen what thing it is that women most desire. 
He sought everywhere for an answer, and was returning to 
his death when he met an ugly old woman who agreed to 
save him, on his promise to marry her. She prompted 
him to tell the queen that women most desire sovereignty 
over their husbands. The answer was accepted, and he 
married the old woman. When they were left alone, after 
the ceremony, he turned his back upon her in disgust. 
She pleads with him.) 

" What is my guilt ? For Goddes love, tel it. 
And it shal been amended, if I may." 
"Amended!" quod this knight, "alias! nay, nay! 
It wol nat been amended nevere mo, 
1 100 Thou art so loothly, and so oold also, 

1 licensed begging friars. ^ villages. ^ stables. * afternoons (?). 
^ limits within which he may beg, etc. 



CHAUCER 139 

And ther-to comen of so lough a kynde, 

That litel wonder is thogh I walwe and wynde.^ 

So, wolde God ! myn herte wolde breste ! " 

" Is this," quod she, "the cause of youre unreste ? " 
1105 "Ye, certeinly," quod he, "no wonder is." 

"Now, sire," quod she, "I koude amende al this. 

If that me liste, er it were dayes thre ; 

So wel ye myghte here yow unto me. 

But for ye speken of swich gentillesse 
1 1 10 As is descended out of old richesse 

That therfore sholden ye be gentil men, 

Swich arrogance is nat worth an hen. 

Looke, who that is moost vertuous alway, 

Pryvee ^ and apert,^ and moost entendeth ay 
II 15 To do the gentil dedes that he kan, 

Tak hym for the grettest gentil man. 

Crist wole we clayme of hym oure gentillesse, 

Nat of oure eldres for hire old richesse ; 

For, thogh they geve us al hir heritage, — 
1 1 20 For which we clayme to been of heigh parage,^ — 

Yet may they nat biquethe for no thyng, 

To noon of us, hir vertuous lyvyng. 

That made hem gentil men y-called be. 

And bad us folwen ^ hem in swich degree. 

(She adds that, so far as his objection relates to her 
age and ugliness, he ought to be well pleased, for a young 
and beautiful wife might give him much trouble by her 
flightiness.) 

" But natheless, syn I knowe youre delit, 
I shal fulfille youre worldly appetit. 
Chese now," quod she, "oon of thise thynges tweye : 
1220 To han me foul and old til that I deye. 
And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf, 
And nevere yow displese in al my lyf ; 

1 writhe and turn. 2 secret. ^ open, * dignity. ^ follow. 



I40 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair, 
And take youre aventure of the repair 

1225 That shal be to youre hous by cause of me, 
Or in som oother place may wel be ; 
Now chese yourselven, wheither that yow liketh." 

This knyght avyseth hym and sore siketh ; ^ 
But atte laste he seyde in this manere ; 

1230 '' My lady and my love, and wyf so deere, 
I put me in youre wise governance ; 
Cheeseth youre self which may be moost plesance. 
And moost honour to yow and nie also ; 
I do no fors ^ the wheither of the two, 

1235 For as yow liketh it suffiseth me." 

"Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie," quod she, 
" Syn I may chese, and governe as me lest ? " 
^*Ye, certes, wyf," quod he, '*I holde it best." 
" Kys me," quod she, "we be no lenger wrothe, 

1240 For by my trouthe, I wol be to yow bothe, — 
This is to seyn, ye, bothe fair and good. 
I prey to God that I moote sterven ^ wood,^ 
But ^ I to yow be al so good and trewe. 
As evere was wyf syn that the world was newe ; 

1245 And but I be to-morn as fair to scene 
As any lady, emperice, or queene. 
That is bitwixe the est and eek the west, 
Dooth with my lyf and deth right as you lest. 
Cast up the curtyn, — looke, how that it is." 

1250 And whan the knyght saugh verraily al this. 
That she so fair was, and so yong ther-to. 
For joye he hente hire in hise armes two, 
His herte bathed in a bath of blisse ; 
A thousand tyme arewe he gan hire kisse, 

1255 And she obeyed hym in every thyng 

That myghte doon hym plesance or likyng. 

1 sigheth. 2 /^^.^ I Q2iYQ not, ^ die. * m^d. ^ unless. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

41. The Chaucerian School. — During a great part of the 
fifteenth century England was at war either with France 
or within her own borders. The time was not favorable 
to literature, but it was by no means so barren as most 
historians represent it. No long poem of the highest 
grade was produced, and the poets whose names are 
best known, such as Lydgate and Occleve, were poor 
ones ; but there were many poets of less repute who did 
pleasing and graceful work, and there was one great 
master of prose. Sir Thomas Malory. 

About forty of the minor poems of this period were 
formerly attributed to Chaucer, and many of them are 
to be found in the older editions of his works. It is 
easy for modern scholars to see, by linguistic evidence, 
that they must have been written by other persons ; but 
a superficial resemblance to some of Chaucer's work was 
enough to deceive the earlier editors. Thus the achieve- 
ment of Chaucer was exaggerated by many thousand 
lines, and the credit of the fifteenth century correspond- 
ingly diminished, on the principle that unto him that 
hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be 
taken away even that which he hath. 

One obvious reason for this mistake is the fact that 
many of the fifteenth-century poets purposely imitated 

I4X 



142 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Chaucer. They felt his greatness and cordially acknowl- 
edged it. Occleve, for example, has the following lines 
in the prologue of his principal poem : 

O maister dere and fader reverent, 

My maister Chaucer ! floure of eloquence, 
Mirrour of fructuous entendement, 

universal fadir in science, 

Alias ! that thou thyne excellent prudence 
In thy bedde mortell myghtest not bequethe ; 
What eyled Dethe ? alias ! why wold he sle thee ? 

Dethe, that didest not harme singulere 

In slaughtre of hym, but alle this lond it smerteth ; 

But natheless yit hast thow no powere 

His name to slee ; his hye vertu asterteth 
Unslayne fro thee, whiche ay us lyfly herteth ^ 

With bookes of his ornat endityng. 

That is to alle this londe enlumynyng. 

And about the middle of the century the Scotch poet, 
Henry son, in the prologue of his Testament of Cress eid^ 
explains how he happened to light upon his subject : 

1 mend ^ the fire, and beikit ^ me about. 
Than tuik a drink my spreitis ^ to comfort. 

And armit me weill fra the cauld thairout; 
To cut the winter nicht and mak it schort, 

1 tuik ane Quair,^ and left all uther sport, 
Writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious 

Of fair Cresseid and lusty Troilus. 

Such references to Chaucer were very common. Imi- 
tations of him, often unavowed, but none the less obvious, 
were still commoner. As we find, however, that Gower 

J encourages. ^ mended. ^ bustled, •* spirits. ^ quire, book, 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES I43 

was praised in terms only less high, we feel cautious 
about crediting the age with fine literary discrimination ; 
and we are not surprised to find that most of the imita- 
tions were far inferior to the model. The later poets 
seem indeed to have imitated those elements in Chaucer 
which were least worth imitating. They followed him 
where he was following mediaeval fashions, but they were 
unable even to enter upon the paths that he had struck 
out for himself. Consequently we find hundreds of lines 
of chivalrous romance and allegory, with the little birds 
singing in the May-time and the poets falling asleep to 
dream of the god of love ; but seldom do we find the 
strain of feeling that made Chaucer's mediaevalism 
modern, or the touch of his masterful style. 

42. The Kingis Quair and the Court of Love. — King 
James the First of Scotland was captured in his boyhood 
by the English, and grew up in England a prisoner. One 
of the best poems of the Chaucerian school. The Kingis 
Qiiai}' (King's Book), which purports to have been (and 
perhaps actually was) written by him, tells that during 
his captivity he saw from his prison window the beautiful 
Joan Beaufort walking in the castle garden below, and 
immediately his whole heart became hers. The poet 
uses the machinery of the Romaimt of the Rose, telling 
us that while the lady walked there the birds all sang a 
happy chorus, and when she went away he fell asleep 
and dreamed that he was transported to the court of 
Love, where he prayed to Cupid and his mother for aid 
in his extremity. It is easy to see, however, that this 
poet treats the old material in a new spirit of sincere 
fervor. The love that he was celebrating was honest 



144 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and genuine, and the quaint symbolism that he borrowed 
for it from the older poets had for him a deeper meaning 
than it had for them. Venus told him, in his dream, that 
he must go to Minerva for counsel, and the latter, after 
saying that there were different ways of loving, explained 
her meaning as follows : 

Lo, my gude sone, this is als mich to seyne, 
As, gif ^ thy luf e sett ^ all utterly 

Of nyce lust,^ thy travail is in veyne ; 
And so the end sail turne of thy folye 
To payne and repentance ; lo, wate thou quhy ?^ 

Gif the^ ne list on lufe thy vertew set, 

Vertu sail be the cause of thy forfet.^ 

Tak him'^ before in all thy governance, 
That in his hand the stere ^ has of 30U all, 

And pray unto his hye purveyance. 

Thy lufe to gye,^ and on him traist and call. 
That corner-stone and ground is of the wall. 

That failis noght, and trust, withoutin drede. 

Unto thy purpose sone he sail the lede. 

Be trewe, and meke, and stedfast in thy thoght, 

And diligent hir merci to procure, 
Noght onely in thy word ; for word is noght, 

Bot gif ^^ thy werk and all thy besy cure 

Accord thereto. . . . 

The poet who wrote this was evidently something more 
than an imitator, and the following dedicatory stanza 
shows rather les^s discrimination than might have been 
expected of him. 

1 if. 2 depends. ^ on foolish desire. * knowest thou why ? ^ thee. 
^ downfall. '' i.e., God. ^ guidance. ^ guide. '^^ but if = unless. 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 145 

Unto the impnis ^ of my maisteris dere, 

Gowere and chaucere, that on the steppis satt 

Of rethorike, quhill ^ thai were lyvand here, 
Superlative as poetis laureate 
In moralitee and eloquence ornate, 

I recommend my buk in lynis sevin. 

And eke thair saulis unto the blisse of hevin. Amen. 

The Court of Love, one of the poems formerly attrib- 
uted to Chaucer, is made of the same old material as The 
Kingis Quair. The poet-lover tells us that he v^ent to 
the Court of Love v^hen he was eighteen years of age, 
and there at the king's command was instructed in the 
laws of the realm. Twenty statutes are set forth in full 
as he found them in the statute-book ; but it is clear, 
from the way they are put, that this poet was reviving 
the old forms from the Romaunt of the Rose merely in 
a spirit of levity. The god and his laws are no more 
to be taken seriously than the King's court in Alice in 
Wonderland, Here are some of the statutes : 

The eleventh statut ; — Thy signes for to con ^ 
With y and finger, and with smyles soft. 

And low to cough, and alway for to shon, 
For dred of spyes, for to winken oft : 
But secretly to bring a sigh a-loft. 

And eke beware of over-moch resort ; ^ 

For that, paraventure, spilleth al thy sport. 

The fifteenth statut ; — Use to swere and stare. 

And counterfet a lesing^ hardely. 
To save thy ladys honour every-where, 

And put thyself to fight for her boldly : 

1 hymns, poems. ^ while. ^ know. * company. ^ falsehood. 



146 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Sey she is good, virtuous, and gostly,^ 
Clere of entent, and herte, and thought and wille ; 
And argue not, for reson ne for skille, 

Agayn thy ladys plesir ne entent, 

For love wil not be countrepleted, indede : 

Sey as she seith, than shalt thou not be shent,^ 
" The crow is whyte ; ye, truly, so I rede : '' 
And ay what thing that she thee will forbede. 

Eschew all that, and give her sovereintee, 

Her appetyt folow in all degree. 

The poet of The Kingis Quair v^ould hardly have 
admitted into his statute-book a law which recognized the 
necessity of lying to save the honor of one's lady. A 
little farther on in The Court of Love the author's comic 
and satiric purpose becomes yet more apparent. .He 
says he read through all the statutes relating to men, 
with an officer of the court named Rigor watching him ; 
and then, 

I turned leves, loking on this boke. 

Where other statuts were of women shene ; ^ 

And right furthwith Rigour on me gan loke 
Full angrily, and seid unto the quene 
I traitour was, and charged me let been : 

"There may no man," quod he, "the statuts know, 

That long to woman, hy degree ne low." 

And at the end of the poem there is another touch of 
humor. We are told that it is May-day, and that the 
birds are singing psalms and anthems in the trees ; the 
description of their chorus is prettily done ; indeed it is 
one of the daintiest of all these ornithological passages ; 

1 holy. 2 rejected. ^ fair. 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES I47 

but after all the other birds have had their turn, the 
cuckoo pipes up. He, it will be understood, is a bird of 
ill-omen to all true lovers. 

And furth the cokkow gan precede anon, 
With '' Be7iedictus^^ thanking god in hast, 

That in this May wold visit thaim echon, 

And gladden thaim all whyl the fest shal last : 
And therewithall a-loughter out he brast, 

"I thank it god that I shuld end the song. 

And all the service which hath been so long." 

It should be noted that while the author of The 
Kingis Quair and the author of The Court of Love 
seem men of radically different temperaments, they 
have this at least in common : they are not satisfied 
with the old hollow conventions of court allegory. 
They express their dissatisfaction in different ways, one 
by an attempt at radical reform, the other by a light- 
hearted parody. Each in his way was a sincerer artist 
than the original poet of the Romaunt of the Rose, for 
each was nearer to real life ; though in the second of 
our two poets we find realism only in so far as he pricks 
the bubble of the conventional romance. His poem is 
to the true court allegory what the fabliau was to the 
romance. 

All the poems thus far quoted in this chapter were 
written in a stanza-form known as the '*rime royal,'* 
owing to its use by the author of The Kingis Quair. It 
had been a favorite stanza with Chaucer, appearing, 
for example, in Troilus and Cressida, and was naturally 
popular with his imitators. 



148 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

43. Maundevile*s Travels. — A remarkable book of 
travels, purporting to be by Sir John Maundevile, was 
first published in French about 1 360, and translated into 
English perhaps half a century later. The author was 
probably John de Bourgogne ; and certainly Maundevile 
himself, the traveler, was as purely a fictitious person as 
Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe. The book seems to have 
been made up partly from the author's imagination and 
partly from the stories of earlier travelers, and it is with- 
out any value as a record of fact ; but it is a very enter- 
taining work, and is not without interest for the serious 
student of mediaeval thought. A few passages, selected 
almost at random, will illustrate its character. 

In Ethiope alle the ryveres and alle the watres ben 
trouble, and thai ben somdelle salte, for the gret hete 
that is there. And the folk of that contree ben lyghtly 
dronken, and han but litille appetyt to mete : and thei 
lyven not longe. In Ethiope ben many dyverse folk : and 
Ethiope is clept Cusis. In that contree ben folk, that han 
but o foot : and thei gon so fast that it is marvaylle : and 
the foot is so large that it schadewethe alle the body a^en 
the Sonne, whanne theiwole lye and reste hem. In Ethiope, 
whan the children ben 3onge and lytille, thei ben alle ^elowe : 
and. whan that thei wexen of age, that 3alownesse turnethe 
to ben alle blak. 

In passynge be the lond of Cathaye, toward the highe 
Ynde, and toward Bacharye, men passen be a kyngdom 
that men clepen Caldilhe : that is a fuUe fair contree. And 
there growethe a maner of fruyt, as thoughe it weren 
gowrdes : and whan thei ben rype, men kutten hem a to, 
and men fynden with inne a lytylle best, in flessche, in bon 
and blode, as though it were a lytylle lomb, with outen 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES I49 

wolle. And men eten bothe the frut and the best : and 
that is a gret marveylle. Of that frute I have eten ; alle 
thoughe it were wondirfulle : but that I knowe wel, that 
God is marveyllous in his werkes. 

And alle be it that men fynden gode dyamandes in 
Ynde, 3it natheless men fynden hem more comounly upon 
the roches in the see, and upon hilles where the myne of 
gold is. And thei growen many to gedre, on lytille, an- 
other gret. And ther ben sume of the gretnesse of a bene, 
and sume als grete as an haselle note. And thei ben 
square and poynted of here owne kynde, bothe aboven 
and benethen, with outen worchinge of mannes hond. 
And thei growen to gedre, male and femele. And thei 
ben norysscht with the dew of hevene. And thei engen- 
dren comounly, and bryngen forthe smale children, that 
multiplyen and growen alle the 3eer. I have often tymes 
assayed, that 3if a man kepe hem with a litylle of the roche, 
and wete hem with May dew ofte sithes, thei schulle growe 
everyche ^eer ; and the smale wole wexen grete. For righte 
as the fyn perl congelethe and wexethe gret of the dew of 
hevene, righte so dothe the verray dyamand : and righte 
as the perl of his owne kynde takethe roundnesse, righte so 
the dyamand, be vertu of God, takethe squarenesse. And 
men schalle bere the dyamaund on his left syde : for it is 
of grettere vertue thanne, than on the righte syde. For 
the strengthe of here growynge is toward the Northe, that 
is the left syde of the world ; and the left parte of man is, 
whan he turnethe his face toward the Est. 

Maundevile's natural philosophy is characteristic of 
his time. During the middle ages science not only 
made little progress ; in some departments it actually 
lost ground. The reason for this is undoubtedly to 
be found chiefly in the character of mediaeval religion. 



150 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Asceticism dominated the world of thought to such an 
extent that the best minds regarded mundane specula- 
tion as folly. Why should man waste time in observa- 
tion of material phenomena, when so few years were 
allotted him to provide for the salvation of his soul ? 
The conviction deepened that the Bible and the early 
fathers of the church were the sources of all useful 
knowledge ; and so the habit grew, all through the 
middle ages, of deriving information not from nature 
but from old and approved authorities. '^ Major est 
scripturae auctoritas," wrote St. Augustine, "quam 
omnis humani ingenii capacitas ; " and this was the 
golden text of all mediaeval philosophy. When nature 
was studied at all, it was likely to be studied in a mys- 
tical spirit. The world was God's creation, the expres- 
sion in matter of God's eternal mind ; and the study 
of nature was thought profitable only because it was 
a way of contemplating Him. This mystical method 
destroyed science. When, for example, a learned man 
saw a flock of gulls fishing, he did not think of observ- 
ing their habits ; he thought only of the insatiate appe- 
tite of the devil for men's souls. The belief that the 
lion dragged dust after him with his tail, in order to 
hide his footsteps, was not questioned, for it was au- 
thorized by holy fathers and it symbolized the secret 
origin of our Saviour. Natural phenomena had a higher 
value than for laboratory purposes. 

Nevertheless, Maundevile shows some glimmering 
comprehension of scientific method. The following 
extracts are far more advanced, in their scientific 
spirit, than the passage about diamonds. 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 151 

In that lond, ne in many othere be^onde that, no man 
may see the Sterre transmontane, that is clept the Sterre of 
the See, that is unmevable, and that is toward the Northe, 
that we clepen the Lode Sterre. But men seen another 
sterre, the contrarie to him, that is toward the Southe, that 
is clept Antartyk. . . . For whiche cause, men may wel 
perceyve that the lond and the see ben of rownde schapp 
and forme. For the partie of the firmament schewethe in 

contree, that schewethe not in another contree. And 
men may well preven be experience and sotyle compasse- 
ment of wytt, that ^if a man fond passages be schippes, 
that wolde go to serchen the world, men myghte go be 
schippe alle aboute the world, and aboven and benethen. 
The whiche thing I prove thus, aftre that I have seyn. . . . 

1 have gon toward the parties meridionales, that is toward 
the Southe, and I have founden that in Lybye men seen 
first the Sterre Antartyk. And so fer I have gon more 
forthe in tho contrees, that I have founde that sterre more 
highe; so that toward the highe Lybye it is 18 degrees 
of heghte and certeyn minutes (of the whiche, 60 minutes 
maken a degree). ... Be the whiche I seye 30U certeynly 
that men may envirowne alle the Erthe of alle the world, 
as wel undre as aboven, and turnen a^en to his contree, 
that hadde companye and schippynge and conduyt. . . . 
Also 3ee have herd me seye that Jerusalem is in the myddes 
of the world ; and that may men preven and schewen there 
be a spere, that is pighte in to the erthe, upon the hour of 
mydday, whan it is Equenoxium, that schew^ethe no schadwe 
on no syde. 

The argument that the earth is round is a good speci- 
men of scientific reasoning. Maundevile's premises are 
inaccurate, for there is no such star a^ the " Sterre 
Antartyk;" but his method is distinctly better than 
reasoning that the world must be round, because God 



152 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

made it and the circle is the perfect figure. His iden- 
tification of the center of the earth with Jerusalem is 
established by similarly questionable means, for it is not 
true that a spear placed erect will cast no shadow there 
at the time of the equinox ; but there was more hope 
for science in such an argument than in the usual 
contention that it must be so, for the prophet Ezekiel 
said so. 

44. Ballads. — At the present time we depend for 
our literature almost wholly upon books and papers, yet 
even now there are some popular songs well known to 
thousands of people, which it would be hard to find in 
print. A few centuries ago literature of this sort was 
very common, and not a few of the ballads that passed 
from mouth to mouth in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
sixteenth centuries have survived by oral tradition even 
to our own time. The term *^ ballad" is often loosely 
used for almost any kind of song, but more strictly it is 
applied to these traditional songs of the people. We 
do not know who composed them, nor (in most cases) 
how old they are. They are generally narrative poems, 
and they tell stories which were doubtless popularly 
known before the ballads took shape ; but just how these 
stories crept from mere tradition into verse, we cannot 
tell. It is generally agreed that the fifteenth century 
was especially productive of ballads, and for that reason 
they are considered in this chapter ; but it must be 
remembered that they were not then a new thing, and 
that they did -not then die out. Many of them have 
close parallels in other Indo-European languages, which 
seem to suggest for their substance, and sometimes 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 53 

even for their form, a very great antiquity ; while 
others, seemingly of the same general character, are 
founded upon actual events knowTi to have occurred 
as late as the eighteenth century. 

The favorite form of the true popular ballad is the 
so-called '' ballad stanza " : 

In somer, when the shawes ^ be sheyne,^ 

And leves be large and long, 
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste 

To here the foulys song ; 

To se the dere draw to the dale, 

And leve the hilles hee. 
And shadow hem in the leves grene. 

Under the grene-wode tre. 

Many of the ballads are cheap and vulgar, while many 
(like the verses just quoted) have an exquisite beauty 
which few of our more lettered poets can rival ; but 
absolute simplicity is characteristic of them all. They 
tell of the sort of incidents and emotions that appeal to 
the popular heart, and they speak the popular language. 
Stories of crime, of love, of enchantment are common ; 
and the heroes are knights, or squires, or minstrels, or 
(better still) outlaws w^ho live '' under the grene-wode 
tre." All, however, are seen from the people's point of 
view. If a ballad tells the tragedy of a noble lady's 
life, it puts the essential pathos poignantly, for there is 
no monopoly in suffering ; but it generally has some 
minor touches which show that the unessentials of 
aristocratic life are viewed from far away. The fol- 

1 groves. - beautiful. 



154 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

lowing stanzas, for example, form the conclusion of the 
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. Sir Patrick had been sent 
to sea on a mad voyage in midwinter, and he and all 
the Scots nobles with him were lost. It will be seen 
that the grief of the mourners is genuinely felt, but that 
the world they live in is to the unknown poet like a 
far-away world of popular romance. 

O lang, lang may their ladies sit, 

Wi thair fans into their hand, 
Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spens 

Cum sailing to the land. 

O lang, lang may the ladies stand, 
Wi thair gold kems in their hair. 

Waiting for thair ain deir lords, 
For they '11 se thame na mair. 

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour, 

It 's fiftie fadom deip. 
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spens, 

Wi the Scots lords at his feit. 

Robin Hood, the mythical hero of popular legend, is the 
central figure in some of the best ballads, and about 
him are clustered a number of satellites, such as Little 
John, Maid Marian, Will Scarlett, and Friar Tuck, just 
as Launcelot, Gawayne, and Guinevere grouped them- 
selves about the hero of the great cycle of court 
romance. Indeed, some of the ballads are mere popu- 
larized abridgments of the old romances ; but these are 
generally far inferior to those of wholly popular origin. 
The latter, too, are noteworthy in literary history as 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 55 

almost the only part of our mediaeval literature that 
owed nothing to French influence. 

The following ballad, known as Edivard^ is one of 
the best that are short enough to be given here com- 
plete. The text is of uncertain age, but the substance 
must be very old, for it is found among the popular 
ballads of Sweden and Denmark. 

Quhy dois 30ur brand sae drop wi' bluid, 

Edward, Edward ? 
Quhy dois 30ur brand sae drop wi' bluid, 

And quhy sae sad gang ^ee, O ? 
O I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 

Mither, mither : 
O I hae killed my hauke sae guid, 
And I had nae mair bot hee, O ! 

3our haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, 

Edward, Edward : 
3our haukis bluid was nevir sae reid, 

My deir son I tell thee, O ! 
O I hae killed my reid-roan steid, 

Mither, mither : 
O I hae killed my reid-roan steid, 

That erst was sae fair and free, O ! 

3our steid was auld, and 36 hae gat mair, 

Edward, Edward : 
3our steid w^as auld, and 36 hae gat mair. 

Sum other dule ^ 36 drie,^ O ! 
O I hae killed my fadir deir, 

Mither, mither : 
O I hae killed my fadir deir, 
Alas, and wae is mee, O ! 

1 sorrow. ^ suffer. 



156 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

And quhatten penance wul i^e drie for that, 

Edward, Edward ? 
And quhatten penance wul ^e drie for that ? 

My deir son, now tell me, O. 
He set my feit in 3onder boat, 
Mither, mither : 
lie set my feit in 3onder boat. 
And He fare ovir the sea, O. 

And quhat wul ^e doe wi' 30ur towirs and 30ur ha^ 

Edward, Edward ? 
And quhat wul 3e doe wi' 30ur towirs and 30ur ha'. 

That were sae fair to see, O ? 
He let thame stand til they doun fa', 

Mither, mither : 
He let thame stand til they doun fa'. 

For here nevir mair maun I bee, O. 

And quhat wul 3e leive to 30ur bairns and 30ur wife, 

Edward, Edward ? 
And quhat wul 3e leive to 30ur bairns and 30ur wife, 

Quhan 3e gang ovir the sea, O ? 
The warldis room, let them beg throw life, 

Mither, mither: 
The warldis room, let them beg throw life, 
For thame nevir mair wul I see, O. 

And quhat wul 3e leive to 30ur ain mither deir, 

Edward, Edward ? 
And quhat wul 3e leive to 30ur ain mither deir ? 

My deir son, now tell me, O. 
The curse of hell frae me sail 3e beir, 

Mither, mither : 
The curse of hell frae me sail 3e beir, 
Sic counsels 3e gave to me, O. 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 1 57 

It is remarkable that at the times when these ballads 
flourished they were not regarded as literature at all. 
They were sung or recited by harpists or fiddlers in 
village market-places, and were taught by grandmothers 
to their children's children as snatches of nursery rime 
are taught nowadays ; but until comparatively modern 
times the literary classes seem to have paid them little 
attention. After the middle of the eighteenth century 
the educated world *' discovered " them, and their sim- 
plicity, their tragic intensity, their extraordinary beauty, 
were among the chief influences in the great revolution 
in literary taste that then took place. Little space is 
accorded to them here, because during their centuries 
of subterranean existence they had no influence upon 
the general history of literature ; but they are of the 
greatest importance to the student of eighteenth and 
nineteenth-century poetry, and are an endless delight 
to the general reader. 

45. Dramatic Entertainments. — We have seen that the 
Wife of Bath was fond of going to ^^pleyes of myra- 
cles." Miracle Plays had been a common form of pop- 
ular entertainment long before her time, and they 
continued in favor till they were superseded by the 
drama of Shakespeare's age. They had been originally 
mere dramatizations of Biblical stories, presented in 
church by the clergy for the instruction and edification 
of the unlettered laity ; but in the thirteenth century 
the town guilds (organizations somewhat like the mod- 
ern trades' unions) took them up and began giving them 
regularly in public places, just as a modern college fra- 
ternity or regiment of militia may give an operetta or a 



158 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

play. There were no theatres, but none were needed 
for such simple representations as were then found sat- 
isfactory. The guilds performed on pageants, large 
movable stages not unlike our circus vans or mail 
wagons, with room inside to dress, and room on top for 
acting. At a time previously announced, one of these 
pageants, drawn (let us suppose) by some members of 
the guild of Tanners, would appear in the market-place 
of the town, or at some suitable street-corner, and stop 
there. When all was ready, those of the guild who 
were chosen to do the acting would appear on the top 
and perform a little play about the Creation ; and when 
it was ended, the pageant would be drawn away, to give 
its play again in some other part of the town. Mean- 
while, another pageant, provided by the guild of Tallow- 
chandlers, arrives and portrays the temptation and fall 
of man. After this comes a long series of plays, run- 
ning perhaps through the whole period of Old Testa- 
ment history ; and the audience spend the whole of a 
holiday watching them. 

Another kind of dramatic entertainment common in 
the later middle ages was the Morality Play. , This was 
a dramatized moral allegory. The play of Everyman, 
for example, tells how God sends Death to Everyman to 
summon him to judgment. Everyman is reluctant, but 
finds that he cannot disobey the summons. He goes 
to a friend named Fellowship and tells him that he is in 
trouble, and Fellowship makes extravagant protestations 
of eagerness to do anything for him ; but when he 
learns that Everyman wants him to go on a long jour- 
ney at the bidding of Death, he backs out and leaves 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 159 

Everyman alone in his despair. The hero of the play 
then consults Good Deeds, but she says he has neglected 
her so long that she can do nothing for him. In like, 
manner every resource fails him, until he makes the 
acquaintance of Confession and does penance for his 
sins. After that Good Deeds promises to stay by him 
to the end, and he dies in peace. 

The fifteenth century saw both Miracle and Morality 
Plays at the height of their popularity, but the former 
and probably also the latter had existed long before. 
It is sometimes supposed that the Moralities grew out 
of the Miracle Plays, but it is more likely that they 
grew up separately. Both were manifestations of a 
dramatic instinct which seems always to have existed in 
the English race. The fabliaux and the ballads and 
the romances could not be well sung or recited without 
a good deal of action and dramatic expression, and the 
two species of plays were simply two set forms in which 
the same dramatic instinct manifested itself. 

The Moralities interest us chiefly as being the germ 
from which, in the sixteenth century, the regular drama 
developed ; but they are interesting also as presenting 
mediaeval allegory in one of its latest stages. We have 
seen how allegory sprang from the mystical habit of see- 
ing deep meanings in natural phenomena. From this 
grew the literary fashion of personifying abstractions, 
as was done in Piers Plowman, for example, and in 
the chivalrous court allegory. In the later middle ages, 
however, allegory seems to have lost its first mysterious 
charm, and to have been used simply because it was the 
fashion. In Pie^^s Plowman it is evident that the poet 



l6o EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was only half at ease — that he was always tempted to 
individualize his abstract characters. He gives, for 
example, an elaborate account of the Seven Deadly 
Sins ; but '' Gluttony " is not a mere personification ; he 
is a very human glutton, evidently drawn from Lang- 
land's actual observation among the lower classes. 
" Covetousness " has a wife named Rose, who keeps 
a retail shop at Westminster, goes to the fair at Win- 
chester, cheats with false cloth measures, etc. ; and 
so through the list. The characters are Sins in name 
only ; in fact, they are individual sinners. In the 
Moralities we find the same tendency toward concrete- 
ness. The earlier writers were content with such 
heroes as "Everyman'' or ** Humanity," while the minor 
characters were mere personifications of vices and vir- 
tues, or other abstract ideas ; and the plots were strict 
allegories representing the conflict between virtue and 
temptation. Later plays, however, are limited less and 
less by the exact significance of the names of the char- 
acters, the dramatis personae become more and more 
like individuals, and the plots are constructed as much 
for entertainment as for moral instruction. The devil 
figured conspicuously, and while in the earliest plays he 
must have impressed the spectators with horror and 
fear, in later ones he was an extravagant burlesque, 
equipped with a long tail and intended almost solely to 
raise a laugh. Another stock character, known specif- 
ically as '^The Vice," frequently consorted with him, 
and in the later plays is made equally ludicrous. Comic 
episodes abound, in which the characters (especially the 
vices) play absurd jokes upon one another, some of them 



THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES l6l 

being much more like circus clowns than solemn allegor- 
ical abstractions. Indeed, the '^ clown'' or "fool" of 
the later drama is a lineal descendant of the Vice of the 
Morality. This tendency to concreteness was a natural 
result of the dramatic form, for the stage is a place for 
individuals rather than for allegory ; but it was also a 
symptom of the passing of mediaeval mysticism, and 
presents a close parallel to the satirical touch given to 
chivalrous allegory in such poems as The Court of Love. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RENAISSANCE 

46. Caxton. — The process of printing with movable 
types was invented on the continent just before the 
middle of the fifteenth century, and within the next two 
decades several printing offices were established there. 
At this time William Caxton, an English merchant, was 
engaged in business at Bruges. He was a lover of 
literature, and was quick to see both the literary and 
the commercial opportunities in the new art. Coming 
home to England in 1476, he brought with him printing 
presses and fonts of type, and opened the first English 
printing house in the neighborhood of Westminster 
Abbey. In 1477 he published the first book printed on 
English soil, entitled Dictes and Sayings of the Philos- 
ophers. Other books followed in rapid succession, some 
new, others reissues of books long known in manuscript. 
Caxton's choice of books for printing was largely guided 
by his business instinct, but his literary tastes prompted 
him to print all the best books available in the language, 
and he translated many French books for the press with 
his own hand. Among the standard works that he printed 
were the Canterbury Tales, the Confessio Aniantis, Rey- 
nard the Fox, and translations of some of Cicero's moral 
essays. The most celebrated of the new books from 
his press was Malory's Morte Darthitr. 

162 



THE RENAISSANCE 163 

The invention of printing made the Renaissance 
possible. The immediate result was a great reduction 
in the price of books, and a correspondingly great 
increase in the supply. A few figures will show the 
importance of the change. The following items are 
from the bill of a professional copyist, for work done 
in 1468 at his employer's order: 

Itm for De Regimine Principum, which conteyneth 

xlv leves, after a peny a leaf, which is right s. d. 

wele worth, . . . . . . . iii ix 

Itm for Rubrissheyng of all the booke, . . iii iv 

The price, it seems, was a penny a leaf for the mere 
copying of an ordinary page of verse, and nearly as 
much more for simple decoration of margins, initial 
letters, etc., in red ink. For copying solid prose a 
double price was charged, so that a volume of moderate 
size, with the ordinary embellishments, would cost from 
threepence to f ourpence a leaf. The price seems small 
enough, but all prices were low in the fifteenth century. 
An ox could be bought for twenty shillings, a sheep for 
two, and a pound of butter for a penny ; and the wages 
of a skilled workman were only about sixpence a day. 
In general, money went ten or twelve times as far as it 
will go now, but it was more than ten or twelve times 
as hard to get. Fourpence a leaf then was, therefore, 
about equivalent to a dollar a leaf now. A simple cal- 
culation will show that to the average man of that time 
a book was as expensive as a horse is to-day, and a little 
library of three or four shelves was an almost impossible 
luxury. 



l64 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

We do not know the prices at which Caxton sold his 
works, but we have a record of two appraisals, shortly 
after his death, of one of his largest and most elegant 
folios — the Golden Legend. This was a book of 449 
leaves, and the higher of the two values known to have 
been put upon it was 1 3^*. d^d. Comparing this with the 
figures given above, even without allowing for the differ- 
ence in size between Caxton' s folio and the paper used 
by the earlier copyist, we get the inference that the 
immediate effect of the new art was to reduce the cost 
of books to about one-tenth what it had been. We have 
not sufficient data for exact comparisons, but it is certain 
that the reduction was very great, and these figures are 
sufficiently accurate for illustration. 

47. Skelton. — The end of the fifteenth and the 
beginning of the sixteenth century were a period of 
transition between the Middle Ages and the Renais- 
sance. The mediaeval ideals had been shattered, but 
nothing was yet ready to take their place. The church 
had lost hold, but the Reformation had not yet begun. 
The monasteries in general had ceased to be seats of 
learning and centers of spiritual influence. The last 
vestige of chivalry had been effaced by the Wars of the 
Roses, which had devastated England through a great 
part of the fifteenth century ; for whole families of 
noble blood had been annihilated, and gunpowder and 
ball had conclusively proved their superiority to knightly 
accoutrements. Peace had come in 1485, with the ac- 
cession of Henry VII, but it had brought no revival 
of ancient chivalrous glory, no great awakening in the 
church, no renaissance in literature. Henry's reign 



THE RENAISSANCE 165 

was a period of materialistic commercialism, in which 
(to characterize it sweepingly) England was destitute 
of spiritual life, ideals, or enthusiasm. But the forces 
were already at work which were destined to bring in 
the Renaissance. 

The poet John Skelton was typical of this period. 
He might well have described himself in Matthew 
Arnold's phrase as 

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
The other powerless to be born, 

for he saw that the mediaeval world was dead, and the 
beginnings of modern civilization seemed to him impo- 
tent and aimless. He had had a thorough university 
education, and had taken priest's orders just before the 
turn of the century, — not because he felt any spirit- 
ual call to holy office, but because that was the natural 
thing for a young man of letters to do. The clergy 
had no monopoly of learning, but they had, among poor 
men, a monopoly of leisure. Ecclesiastical laws forbade 
priests to marry, but Skelton was both husband and 
father, for he looked upon ecclesiastical authorities with 
defiance and contempt. Much of his best verse was 
fierce satire upon the abuses in the church of which 
he was himself a minister. Here is a specimen from 
Colyn Cloute, written in the peculiar jerky metre still 
called "Skeltonic." 

And if ye stande in doute 
Who brought this ryme about^, 
My name is Colyn Cloute. 
I purpose to shake oute 



1 66 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

All my connyng bagge, 
Lyke a clerkely hagge ; 
For though my ryme be ragged, 
Tattered and lagged, 
Rudely rayne beaten, 
Rusty and moughte ^ eaten, 
If ye take well therwith. 
It hath in it some pyth. 
For, as farre as I can se, 
It is wronge with eche degre : 
For the temporalte ^ 
Accuseth the spiritualte ; ^ 
The spirituall agayne 
Dothe grudge and complayne 
Vpon the temporall men : 
Thus eche of other blother ^ 
The tone ^ agayng the tother : 
Alas, they make me shoder! 
For in hoder moder^ 
The Churche is put in faute; 
The prelates ben so haut,^ 
They say, and loke so hy. 
As though they wolde fly 
Aboute the sterry skye. 
Laye men say indede 
How they take no hede 
Theyr sely shepe to fede. 
But plucke away and pull 
The fleces of theyr wull, 
Vnethes^ they leue a locke 
Of wull amonges theyr ftocke ; 
And as for theyr connynge,^ 

1 moth. 2 laity. ^ clergy. ■* gabble. ^ the tone = that one. 
^ hugger-mugger, confusion. " haughty. ^ scarcely. ^ learning, 
professional ability. 



THE RENAISSANCE 167 

A glommynge and a mummynge, 
And make therof a iape ; ^ 
They gaspe and they gape 
All to have promocyon, 
There is theyr hole deuocyon, 
With money, if it wyll hap, 
To catche the forked cap : ^ 
Forsothe they are to lewd 
To say so, all beshrewd ! 

The last two lines are an ironical imprecation upon the 
ignorant laymen who utter these irreverent slanders 
against the clergy. 

Skelton wrote many kinds of poetry, from love-songs 
(some of which have a genuine lyrical beauty) to moral- 
ity plays (one of which is perhaps the best extant) ; 
and he was interested in observing and criticising all 
departments of contemporary life. He dissects the 
courtier, the priest, and the tavern-keeper, with equal 
keenness. The mediaeval thinker, as we have seen, 
was absorbed in the mysteries of life and death, but 
Skelton was concerned with the phenomena of life. 
His work is often absolutely unquotable because of its 
coarseness, — such coarseness as is heard among the 
vagrant boys of city streets ; but it has the merit of 
boldness and vigor, and is not immoral. In The Ttm- 
nyng of Elynotir Rtitmnyng he gives one of the most 
vivid pictures in the English language of low debauch- 
ery, describing all the forlorn women who frequent 
Elynour's ale-house on brewing days. The following 
is a mild specimen of his descriptive power : 



1 \ 



jest. 2 /.^.^ the bishop's mitre. 



1 68 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

But to make vp my tale, 
She breweth noppy ale 
And maketh therof port ^ sale 
To trauellars, to tynkers, 
To sweters, to swynkers, 
And all good ale drynkers, 
That wyll nothynge spare, 
But drynke tyll they stare 
And brynge themselfe bare, 
With, Now away the mare. 
And let us sley care. 
As wise as an hare ! 

(The last three lines seem to represent the topers as 
singing some drinking-song.) 

Come who so will 
To Elynour on the hyll, 
Wyth, Fyll the cup, fyll. 
And syt there by styll, 
Erly and late : 
Thyther cometh Kate, 
Cysly, and Sare, 
With theyr legges bare, 
And also theyr fete 
Hardeley ^ full unswete ; 
With theyr heles dagged,^ 
Theyr kyrtelles all to-iagged, 
Theyr smockes all to-ragged, 
Wyth tytters and tatters, 
Brynge dysshes and platters, 
Wyth all theyr myght runnynge 
To Elynour Rummynge, 
To haue of her tunnynge : 
She leneth ^ them on ^ the same, 

1 wholesale. ^ assuredly. ^ be-mired. * furnisheth. ^ some of. 



THE RENAISSANCE 169 

And thus begynneth the game. 
Some wenches come vnlased, 
Some huswyues come vnbrased, 
A sorte of foule drabbes 
All scuruy with scabbes : 
Some be flybytten, 
Some skewed ^ as a kytten ; 
Some wyth a sho clout 
Bynde theyr heddes about ; 
Some haue no herelace,^ 
Theyr lockes about theyr face, 
Theyr tresses vntrust,^ 
All full of vnlust ; ' 
Some loke strawry,^ 
Some cawry mawry ; ^ 
Full vntydy tegges ^ 
Lyke rotten egges. 
Suche a lewde sorte 
To Elynour resorte 
From tyde to tyde : 
Abyde, abyde, 
And to you shall be tolde 
Howe hyr ale is solde. 

There is much buffoonery in Skelton, but no humor of 
the kindlier sort. There are passages that may be called 
fun, but they are the fun of a man who sees little in the 
world to love, and little hope for the future ; they are 
the " saeva indignatio'' of the pessimist who laughs 
fiercely in despair. 

48. Mediaeval Universities. — Until the period which we 
are now considering, the course of study at the great 

1 walking obliquely (?). 2 hair-band. ^ untnissed. ^ unloveliness. 
^ seedy (?). ^ threadbare. ''' slatterns. 



I/O EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

universities had for several centuries undergone no very 
radical change. The curriculum began with Grammar, 
Rhetoric, and Logic (collectively designated as the 
trivmni)^ and continued, for advanced students, with 
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy (the qiiad- 
rivitim). The Grammar and Rhetoric of the trivium 
meant chiefly the parsing of Latin sentences, the com- 
position of Latin verses, and the study of treatises by 
post-classical Latin grammarians and rhetoricians. Logic 
was in mediaeval estimation the most important of the 
three subjects, for logic was the soul of philosophy, and 
philosophy was the end of all learning. Logical methods 
were used in all the more advanced studies. The student, 
for example, who had finished both trivium and qtiadri- 
viumy and remained at the university for the study of 
theology, would pursue that study in some such manner 
as the following : he would attend lectures at which 
perhaps the Su^nma Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas 
would be read aloud (the students, of course, being 
unable to possess copies). Before reading, the lecturer 
stated the main divisions of the work, then the subdivi- 
sions of the first part, and the further subdivisions of the 
first subdivision, until he had reached the first sentence : 
then, if that sentence were not susceptible of still further 
subdivision, he would read it, paraphrase it, explain why 
it stood first, and what lessons were deducible from it. 
Then he would pass to the next, explaining why it stood 
second rather than first or third, and so on through the 
lesson. 

This was the analytical method. The " dialectical " 
method of instruction was common also. A passage of 



THE RENAISSANCE 171 

doubtful interpretation was read, and one interpretation 
was stated ; then the students were set to work assaiUng 
or defending it. Finally the Master stated his own 
interpretation, and justified it. 

It is not to be supposed that this sort of instruction 
was fruitless. It gave the young "clerk" an excellent 
training for a certain kind of intellectual cleverness. It 
did not, however, conduce to the general advancement of 
learning. The student of theology was encouraged to 
consider, not what was the relation of man to God, but 
what Thomas Aquinas or some other divine had said 
about it, and what he meant. The dialectical method 
made men very clever at disputing such questions as 
whether two angels could occupy the same place at the 
same time, or whether God could have assumed any 
other than the human form, and if so, whether, in case 
he had assumed the form of an animal or a vegetable, he 
could have had the power of speech ; but such disputa- 
tions did nothing for the cause of religion or science, and 
very little for the cause of liberal culture. 

The life of the students was very hard. Most of 
them were poor. As late as 1550 we read that the 
students at St. John's College, Cambridge, had two 
meals a day on one pennyworth of meat, studied till 
nine or ten o'clock, and then ran or walked briskly for 
half an hour to warm their feet before going to bed. 
Diseases were common. In the reign of Henry VII 
the plague visited Oxford six times, and various other 
kinds of fever were the natural result of unsanitary 
conditions. Erasmus left the University of Paris in dis- 
gust, and said afterwards that he had brought away 



1/2 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

little learning, but " a large quantity of lice " ; and the 
English universities were probably not much more 
cleanly. All these things were due partly to igno- 
rance, but partly also to the characteristic mediaeval idea 
that the mind is improved by the sufferings of the flesh. 
49. The Revival of Learning. — The Renaissance began 
in Italy in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and 
spread gradually to northern Europe. When we say 
this, we mean by the word Renaissance the transition 
between the mediaeval world and the modern. We have 
seen that Chaucer was in most essentials a modern poet ; 
and before his time Petrarch and Boccaccio had intro- 
duced much of the modern spirit into Italian letters ; 
but the general awakening came a century later. It 
was a universal movement, affecting literature, reli- 
gion, art, manners, science, — in short, all departments 
of human activity. We cannot account for it, except in 
part, just as we cannot altogether account for the greater 
renascence of the nineteenth century ; we can only chron- 
icle the events and connect them with one another. 

Perhaps the most important feature of the Renais- 
sance was the revival of interest in classical literature. 
It is usual to date this from the year 1453, for in that 
year Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and many 
Greek scholars who had lived there were driven to seek 
other homes. They carried their learning with them, 
and spread it over western Europe ; but it would be 
safer to regard this event as merely contributing to the 
movement, — certainly not as its sole and sufficient ex- 
planation. The importance of the revelation of ancient 
literature to the mediaeval world can hardly be over- 



THE RENAISSANCE 173 

estimated. We are likely to underestimate it now, for, 
in the four centuries that have elapsed since the Renais- 
sance, most of the virtue that was in Greek thought has 
been directly or indirectly absorbed into our own litera- 
ture. If all the classical literature should somehow be 
taken away from us, the loss would be incomparably less 
than was the gain of finding it, to the mediaeval world. 
Ancient Greece was to the Europe of the fifteenth 
century what modern Europe is to Japan. A race 
that had for many generations known nothing broader 
than the theology of the schools, the ascetic morality 
of the cloister, and science like that of Maundevile 
and the Bestiary, was suddenly brought face to face 
with the highest civilization that the world had yet 
known, and the result was an incalculable widening of 
their mental, moral, and spiritual horizon. The new 
spirit thus introduced is sometimes called ''humanism," 
and we speak of the men who were foremost in intro- 
ducing it as "the humanists." 

50. The Humanists. — The most eminent of the human- 
ists was Desiderius Erasmus. He was born at Rotter- 
dam about 1466, and was bred in Holland; yet in 
writing to a compatriot he once apologized for writing 
in Latin, on the ground that he was not sufficiently 
acquainted with Dutch. This fact illustrates his cosmo- 
politan character. He was ''a citizen of Europe," and 
Latin, which was the language of learning at Oxford as 
well as at Paris or Rome, was his only natural medium. 
He was persuaded, when hardly past boyhood, to 
become a monk ; but he bitterly regretted the step, 
and after a few years obtained permission to leave his 



1/4 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

monastery. For several years he wandered from place 
to place in northern Europe, eagerly seeking to perfect 
his education, and especially seeking some one who could 
teach him Greek ; for he heard of the new learning, and 
he knew that Greek was the key to it. At length, 
probably in 1498, he came to Oxford. There he found 
a little circle of learned and large-minded men, some of 
whom had been in Italy and learned Greek, while all 
were enthusiastic for the new culture. He was charmed 
with them, and they with him. His restless nature 
prevented him from settling permanently in England, 
although he was repeatedly urged to do so, and the 
greater part of his life was passed on the continent ; 
but he made other visits to England in later years, and 
the English Renaissance perhaps owed as much to him 
as to any individual Englishman. 

The best known of the works of Erasmus, The Praise 
of Folly, was written in England. In its original form 
it was, of course, in Latin, and it is not strictly a part 
of English literature at all ; but it was often republished 
in English, and it reveals the spirit of the new learning 
more clearly than any other single work of the time. It 
was written hurriedly, more in fun than in earnest, and 
is a satire upon the various kinds of folly which were 
left over from the mediaeval world ; but though it is for 
the most part humorous, and negative rather than posi- 
tive in its criticism, it contains many serious passages of 
real eloquence, and affords hints of the higher ideals of 
the reformers, as well as of the older ideals which it was 
their purpose to shatter. The following passages are 
from one of the standard translations : 



THE RENAISSANCE 1/5 

The divines present themselves next. . . . They are 
exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate 
mysteries ; they will tell you to a tittle all the successive 
proceedings of omnipotence in the creation of the uni- 
verse ; they will explain the precise manner of original sin 
being derived from our first parents ; they will satisfy you 
in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time, 
our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin's womb, and 
demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may 
subsist without a subject. . . . And these subtilties are 
alchymized to a more refined sublimate by the abstracting 
brains of their school-men ; the realists, the nominalists, 
the thomists, the albertists, the occamists, the scotists ; 
these are not all, but the rehearsal of a few only, as a 
specimen of their divided sects ; in each of which there is 
so much of deep learning, so much of unfathomable diffi- 
culty, that I believe the apostles themselves would stand 
in need of a new illuminating spirit, if they were to engage 
in any controversy with these new divines. . . . 

The next to these are another sort of brain-sick fools, 
who style themselves monks and of religious orders, 
though they assume both titles very unjustly. . . . Most 
of them place their greatest stress for salvation on a strict 
conformity to their foppish ceremonies, and a belief of 
their legendary traditions ; wherein they fancy to have 
acquitted themselves with so much of supererogation, that 
one heaven can never be a condign reward for their meri- 
torious life ; little thinking that the Judge of all the earth 
at the last day shall put them off, with a who hath required 
these things at your hands ; and call them to account only 
for the stewardship of his legacy, which was the precept 
of love and charity. It will be pretty to hear their pleas 
before the great tribunal : one will brag how he mortified 
his carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish : another will 
urge that he spent most of his time on earth in the divine 
exercise of singing psalms : a third will tell how many days 



1/6 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

he fasted, and what severe penance he imposed on himself 
for the bringing his body into subjection : another shall 
produce in his own behalf as many ceremonies as would 
load a fleet of merchant-men ; a fifth shall plead, that in 
threescore years he never so much as touched a piece of 
money, except he fingered it through a thick pair of gloves : 
a sixth, to testify his former humility, shall bring along 
with him his sacred hood, so old and nasty, that any sea- 
man had rather stand bare-headed on the deck, than put it 
on to defend his head from the sharpest storms : the next 
that comes to answer for himself shall plead, that for fifty 
years together he had lived like a sponge upon the same 
place, and was content never to change his homely habi- 
tation : another shall whisper softly, and tell the judge he 
has lost his voice by a continual singing of holy hymns 
and anthems : the next shall confess how he fell into a 
lethargy by a strict, reserved, and sedentary life : and the 
last shall intimate that he has forgot to speak, by having 
always kept silence, in obedience to the injunction of taking 
heed lest he should have offended with his tongue. But 
amidst all their fine excuses our Saviour shall interrupt 
them with this answer, Woe unto you, scribes and phari- 
sees, hypocrites, verily I know you not ; I left you but one 
precept, of loving one another, which I do not hear any 
one plead he has faithfully discharged : I told you plainly 
in my gospel, without any parable, that my father's king- 
dom was prepared, not for such as should lay claim to it by 
austerities, prayers, or fastings, but for those who should 
render themselves worthy of it by the exercise of faith, and 
the offices of charity : I cannot own such as depend on 
their own merits without a reliance on my mercy : as many 
of you therefore as trust to the broken reeds of your own 
deserts, may even go search out a new heaven, for you 
shall never enter into that, which from the foundations 
of the world was prepared only for such as are true of 
heart. 



THE RENAISSANCE 1/7 

A younger member of Erasmus's English circle was 
Sir Thomas More. His best known work, the Utopia^ 
belongs to English literature only in the same indirect 
way as The Praise of Folly. It is a fanciful sketch of 
an ideal commonwealth, governed according to the en- 
lightened principles of the humanists. The book is 
made up partly of serious speculations, partly of grave 
irony, and partly of purely playful fancies. When we 
read that in Utopia there is no persecution for religious 
differences, and no capital punishment for minor felonies, 
we feel that More is considering the reconstruction of 
society in a really scientific spirit ; but when we are 
told that the Utopians use gold and precious stones 
only for chains and badges of servitude, it is clear that 
he is merely playing with his subject. As a whole, how- 
ever, the Utopia is properly regarded as a typical product 
of the humanistic movement. It has sometimes been 
contrasted with Piers Plowman^ and a comparison of 
the two books is suggestive. Each book is a protest 
against the mediaeval organization of society, and each 
author was eagerly desirous of social reform ; but all 
that Langland could do was to cry out against evil, and 
passionately exhort the world to righteousness and in- 
dustry. Really to devise a regenerated society, based 
upon enlightened legislation and economic theory, was a 
task that had to wait for a mind widened by the Renais- 
sance and the Revival of Learning. 

The Utopia and The Praise of Folly illustrate the 
secular and the religious sides, respectively, of human- 
ism ; but Erasmus was not exclusively a theologian, and 
More, when there came a breach between church and 



1/8 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

state, laid down his life for the church. The two books 
must be considered together, as jointly illustrative of the 
kind of thinking that the humanists stood for. They 
spread the new culture by miscellaneous writings, but 
perhaps still more by their immediate personal influence. 
There was a great controversy, for example, over the 
introduction of Greek studies in the universities. The 
circle of Erasmus and More advocated it, for Greek 
was the key to the gospels as opposed to the scholastic 
theology, and to the wider culture of Athens as opposed 
to that of the middle ages. There was much bitter 
opposition, for the humanists were regarded as heretics, 
and Greek learning was evidently dangerous to ortho- 
doxy ; but the reformers attained some signal successes 
in a very short time. In 15 17, for example, the new 
Corpus Christi college was founded at Oxford, with a 
charter expressly providing for the study of Greek. To 
Erasmus it seemed that the campaign was won, and the 
end of mediaevalism already in sight. 

51. The Reformation. — The humanistic movement 
would doubtless have won the day sooner, if it had not 
been overshadowed by the Reformation. At the time 
when Erasmus and his friends were working for the 
peaceful extension of classical culture, and were hoping 
thereby to accomplish a sweeping reform in church and 
state, Martin Luther was beginning on the continent 
that violent revolt against the Church of Rome which in 
the end left nearly all of northern Europe Protestant. 
Erasmus was a loyal Catholic. He argued persistently 
against the abuses of Romanism, and against the narrow 
theology of the Romanists ; but what he wanted was 



THE RENAISSANCE 1/9 

reform within the church, not secession from it. Luther, 
on the other hand, was as ilHberal in his theology as 
the church from which he revolted. In true mediaeval 
fashion he based his doctrines about original sin, justi- 
fication by faith, predestination, etc., largely upon the 
authority of the early fathers of the church ; and the 
essence of his Protestant theology was in most respects 
difference of opinion with the Church of Rome, rather 
than difference of spirit or - method. It was not his 
theological thinking that made him great, but his per- 
sistent and dauntless courage ; and his popular strength 
came from his eloquent denunciation of Romanist corrup- 
tion, as much as from his substitute for the Catholic faith. 
Erasmus at first sympathized with Luther. When 
asked his opinion of him, he said, '' Luther has com- 
mitted two crimes: he has hit the Pope on his crown, 
and the monks in their bellies." But in general he 
would rather expound the gospels than quarrel about 
them, and he once wrote to Luther that a courteous 
reserve would accomplish more than impetuosity. As 
the Reformation gathered force, he looked upon it with 
increasing uneasiness. It was wiping out abuses which 
he abhorred, but it also threatened to thwart his highest 
intellectual hopes. It aroused angry passions, and was 
accompanied by violent political upheavals, instead of 
reasonable discussion. It is true that the work of the 
Oxford humanists had done much to prepare the way 
for the Reformation ; as was said at the time, Erasmus 
laid the ^gg, and Luther hatched it ; but Erasmus pro- 
tested that his egg had a genuine chicken in it, and 
Luther had hatched out a very different bird. 



l80 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

The English Reformation was precipitated by a per- 
sonal quarrel of the king. Henry VIII wanted to 
divorce his queen, in order to marry the beautiful Anne 
Boleyn, and the Pope would not consent to the divorce ; 
accordingly Henry put an end to papal supremacy, and 
constituted himself the supreme head of the Church 
of England. This act was possible only because of the 
strong spirit of popular opposition to the Church of 
Rome, fostered by the work" of Luther as well as by 
that of the humanists ; but it was primarily a personal 
and political revolt, and only secondarily a religious one. 
It led to much persecution and bloodshed. Sir Thomas 
More being one of the first to lose his head in the cause 
of the old church ; and for a time, in the turbulence 
that followed, it seemed that the era of culture inaugu- 
rated by the Oxford reformers had passed away. In 
fact, after the Reformation was finished, the university 
movement went on, and in so far as it was merely a 
movement toward higher culture and the revival of 
classical literature, it eventually triumphed ; but the 
movement for more liberal theology was effectually 
strangled in its infancy. 

52. Wyatt an^ Surrey. — Humanism was the chief ele- 
ment in the Renaissance, but it was not all. There was 
nothing aesthetic in the Revival of Learning. Erasmus 
was in Italy in the age of Michelangelo and Raphael, but 
the things that interested him there were the new learn- 
ing and the new theology ; and while he was crossing the 
Alps on mule-back he whiled away the time by compos- 
ing some Latin verses on old age. In Utopia the popu- 
lation was not made up of painters, poets, or musicians ; 



THE RENAISSANCE l8l 

the people were intensely practical, and got along very 
well without art. But as we look back upon the Renais- 
sance, it seems to us that the new impulse given by it to 
the artistic expression of feeling was almost as extraor- 
dinary as the widening of the intellectual horizon. The 
two poets whose names head this section were typical 
figures in the artistic part of the movement. 

Under the influence of the Revival of Learning, it had 
become common for the sons of English gentlemen to 
seek a higher education than their ancestors had thought 
worth while. Erasmus tells us that this began to be 
fashionable about the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
Thenceforth the sons of noblemen were more commonly 
seen at the universities, and as Italy was the land of cul- 
ture, it became fashionable for them to make a pilgrim- 
age thither. But the gay youths naturally went to Italy 
not, as Erasmus did, because it was the land of Greek 
learning, but because they wanted to see the world. To 
them Italy was the land of literature and art ; and a liter- 
ary and artistic enthusiasm was what they brought with 
them on their return home. In Italy, at this time, there 
was a fashionable revival of interest in poetry, and espe- 
cially in a certain kind of love poetry ; and the conse- 
quence was that in England the composition of love 
poetry after the Italian pattern became a favorite 
accomplishment for fashionable men. 

Wyatt and Surrey were courtiers of Henry VIII, and 
gentlemen in public life ; they were only secondarily 
poets. But they were gentlemen of brilliant accomplish- 
ments, educated both at home and abroad, and of course 
they wrote verse of the fashionable kind. This kind 



1 82 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was, in spirit, akin to the French romances of the school 
of Chrestien of Troyes. As it was the work of gentle- 
men, instead of professional poets, it naturally took the 
form of songs, lyrics, vers de societe, instead of long 
narratives of chivalrous adventure ; but it presents an 
artificial conception of love not unlike what we saw in the 
romances of the twelfth century. Wyatt and Surrey, as 
well as divers other poets of the period, seem to have 
amused themselves and their friends by pouring out im- 
passioned addresses to ladies whom they did not love, 
complaining of rebuffs which they had not suffered, or 
praying for favors which they did not want. Poetry of 
this sort was in itself unpromising. The only school 
of poetry that can produce great results is that in which 
poets learn to express with sincerity feelings that are 
really near to their hearts. The importance of the school 
of Wyatt and Surrey, however, was great in an indirect 
way ; for it directed the attention of men of brilliant 
powers to poetry, strengthened the hold of literature 
upon fashionable society, and started an era of ex- 
perimental versifying which was destined in the end 
to culminate in the work of the great Elizabethan 
poets. 

We are ignorant of the dates of composition of many 
of the poems of Wyatt and Surrey, and therefore cannot 
with certainty decide which was first in some of the in- 
novations introduced by them ; but between them they 
are entitled to the credit of being the first English 
writers of sonnets. The sonnet form is one of many 
highly artificial forms of verse imported from abroad, 
and it is the only one that has proved eminently success- 



THE RENAISSANCE 1 83 

ful in the hands of EngUsh poets. 'Wyatt and Surrey 
borrowed it from the poets of Italy, and achieved a very 
indifferent success with it ; but within half a century 
many other English poets were bettering their instruc- 
tion. Surrey alone is entitled to a doubtful credit for 
being the first English poet to write blank verse. That 
form of composition has indeed proved the noblest of 
which English verse is susceptible ; but Surrey's blank 
verse was bad, and he evidently wrote it not because he 
had any sense of the possibilities latent in the form, but 
because some Italian poets had used it. It was reserved 
for Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton to discover its 
real glories. 

The work of Wyatt and Surrey was not altogether in 
the artificial love poetry of the court. Wyatt passed 
the last years of his life in retirement, and during that 
period composed some poems of a much more genuine 
sort, containing some sincere and dignified reflections 
upon his former life at court, and the life that he was 
then leading in the country. Surrey, too, left some 
poetry of much nobler pretensions than the idle verse 
of gallantry. But, as it happened, the genius of each 
was essentially lyrical, and both did their best work in 
the more artificial kind of verse. Many of the poems 
of each may fairly be called detestable, but both 
poets occasionally rose to a real poetic height. Com- 
parative estimates of the two are often attempted, but 
seem futile. Wyatt, perhaps, shows a truer poetic 
genius ; but then Surrey died very young. Surrey has 
more polish and fluency, but then he had the work of 
his older contemporary for a model. The following 



l84 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

specimen of Wyatt's work has genuine merits, both 
in feeHng and in style : 

Forget not yet the tried intent 
Of such a truth as I have meant ; 
My great travail so gladly spent, 
Forget not yet ! 

Forget not yet when first began 
The weary life ye know, since whan. 
The suit, the service none tell can ; 
Forget not yet ! 

Forget not yet the great assays. 
The cruel wrong, the scornful ways, 
The painful patience in delays, 

Forget not yet I 

Forget not, O, forget not this. 
How long ago hath been, and is 
The mind that never meant amiss — 
Forget not yet ! 

Forget not then thine own approved 
The which so long hath thee so loved. 
Whose steadfast faith yet never moved — 
Forget not this ! 

53. Conclusion. — The full development of the Renais- 
sance in England was delayed by the political excite- 
ments and uncertainties of the reigns of Henry, Edward, 
and Mary ; but the seed had been sown, and the fruits 
were harvested in the reign of Elizabeth. The history 
of the Elizabethan literature is without the scope of this 
volume, and we will only consider briefly some of the 
ways in which the Renaissance led up to it. 



THE RENAISSANCE 1 85 

The most brilliant achievement of the Elizabethan age 
was the development of the drama. We have already 
seen its crude beginnings in the Miracle and Morality 
Plays. If there had been no Revival of Learning, we 
can imagine that some sort of drama might have been 
evolved. Native English instincts might well have 
completed the substitution of individuals for abstractions 
in the Moralities ; but at best we should have had only 
a wild, unregulated melodrama, without unity or form. 
As it was, the scholarly men at the schools and univer- 
sities became interested in the classical drama. In the 
third quarter of the sixteenth century they were acting 
Latin plays before select audiences, and writing English 
plays in imitation of them. These plays were hardly fit 
for acting. Gorboduc, for example, which is commonly 
distinguished as the first English tragedy, presents not 
actions but long speeches about actions — moral essays 
in the form of dialogue, with deeds for their texts. Such 
plays as this were purely academic products, and could 
never have led to a national drama. They were useful, 
however, in modifying the existing popular drama. They 
suggested to such men as Christopher Marlowe the idea 
that the drama was a suitable medium of expression for 
a great poet. They showed how it might be used to 
portray the highest passions in an elevated style and an 
artistic form. At the same time, writers of Moralities 
had already learned that the stage is the place for doing 
things, not merely saying them ; and they had discov- 
ered the great advantage of mixing comic elements with 
tragic. The Elizabethan drama descended from the old 
Morality Plays, under the modifying influence of the 



1 86 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

classical drama. It was a combination of the elements 
demanded by scholarly critics and the elements de- 
manded by popular audiences. 

The aesthetic movement which was begun in the time 
of Wyatt and Surrey continued throughout the Eliza- 
bethan period. It was the fashion to be able to write 
poetry, and especially love lyrics ; and among the many 
who were moved to write, a surprising number exhibited 
real genius. Many anthologies of verse were published, 
known now, collectively, as the Elizabethan Miscel- 
lanies. The titles of some of them, such as the Para- 
dise of Dainty Devices^ or the Gorgeous Gallery of 
Gallant Inventions^ illustrate a certain artificial quality 
from which little of the Eliztabethan lyrical poetry is 
absolutely free. The following specimen, a song of 
Lyly's, has this quality, but it also has the daintiness 
and delicacy that made so many of the love-songs of 
the period imperishable. 

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd 

At cards for kisses ; Cupid paid : 

He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, 

His mother's doves, and team of sparrows ; 

Loses' them too ; then down he throws 

The coral of his lip, the rose 

Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how) ; 

With these, the crystal of his brow, 

And then the dimple on his chin ; 

All these did my Campaspe win : 

At last he set her both his eyes — 

She won, and Cupid blind did rise. 

O Love ! has she done this to thee ? 

What shall, alas ! become of me } 



THE RENAISSANCE 1 8/ 

In prose as well as in poetry the Elizabethans devel- 
oped a style of their own, often disfigured by artificial 
attempts at elegance, but nevertheless very helpful to 
literary progress. Lyly was one of the worst offenders 
against simplicity, and his romance, Euphties, has given 
us the word euphuism for the peculiar affectations of 
its style. Lyly delighted in sentences like this : " O 
divine nature, O heavenly nobilitie, what thing can 
there more be required in a Prince than in greatest 
power to shew greatest patience, in chiefest glorye to 
bring forth chiefest grace, in abundance of all earthly 
pomp to manifest abundance of all heavenly piety : O 
fortunate England that hath such a Queen, ungrateful, 
if thou pray not for her, wicked, if thou do not love her, 
miserable, if thou lose her." This style was, of course, 
vicious ; but it was the result of conscious study of style, 
and it was only after many writers had studied and 
experimented with prose, that a good English style 
could at last become common. 

A noteworthy example of the influence of humanism 
upon the inner life and spirit of England is seen in 
Spenser's Faerie Queene, Spenser, indeed, may be 
chosen to represent almost any of the great move- 
ments in contemporary thought ; but we will close 
with a suggestion as to the great significance of his 
attitude towards moral problems. His great poem is 
composed throughout in a moral spirit ; but it is the 
moral spirit of the classical heathen philosophers, not 
that of the middle ages. To Spenser, virtue is not 
primarily that quality which will bring us to heaven, 
but that which is intrinsically beautiful. Sin is not (as 



1 88 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in the mediaeval homilies or Miracle Plays) the thing that 
leads to hell-mouth, but the thing that is intrinsically 
detestable. This idea of morality is made the basis of a 
long romantic allegory, in which the virtues are person- 
ified as gallant knights and beautiful ladies, while the 
vices are witches, ogres, and dragons. This is perhaps 
the crowning example in Elizabethan literature of the 
triumph of classical over mediaeval feeling ; and it shows 
how the aesthetic Renaissance and the Revival of Learn- 
ing were at last blended. It also illustrates the close 
relation of literature to life. The spirit of Spenser's 
poem is different from that of the Pricke of Conscience^ 
because the Renaissance had wrought a complete change 
in men's everyday modes of thought. 



INDEX 



(The figures refer to pages) 



Accent in Teutonic languages, 17. 
iElfred, as king, 7-9; as man of 

letters, 49, 50. 
Alexander in romance, 58. 
Alexis, St., 54-57. 
Allegory, 80, 81, 160; Pearly 106, 

107; Piers Plowman^ 1 08-1 14, 

160; Love Allegory, 118, 122- 

125, 143-147; Moralities, 158- 

i6t ; Spenser, 188. 
Alliteration, in Old English verse, 

37; Layamon, 66; King Horn^ 

70 ; Cleanness, etc., 104. 
Alliterative Poems, 103-108. 
Alphabet, Old English, 23, n.; 

Runic, 44; Middle English, 56, 

n.; 66, n. 
Alysoun, 82. 
Angles, arrival of, in Britain, 5, 6 ; 

dialect of, 21. 
Anglo-Saxon, see Old English. 
Arthur, in history, 5 ; in romance, 

58-76; referred to by Chaucer, 

Asceticism, 53-57 ; influence of, in 
romance, 65. See also Monas- 
teries. 

Augustine, St., 150. 

Ballads, 152-157. 
Bede, 40-42 ; translated by iElfred, 
49; cited by Layamon, 67, 68. 



Beowulf y 34-4O) 47- 

Bestiary, The, 77-81. 

Bible, Old English metrical para- 
phrases of, 41 ; Middle English 
do., 77; Bede's St. John, 42; 
Wyclif, 103; subject of Alliter- 
ative Poems, 104, 106; of Mira- 
cle Plays, 157. 

Black Death, 99. 

Boccaccio, 125, 126, 172. 

Boethius, 49, 50. 

Book of the Duchess, 125. 

Britons, see Celts. 

Brunanburh, the battle, 8 ; the 
poem, 51. 

Brut, 58. 

Brut, The, of Wace, 65, 68; of 
Layamon, 66-70, "jy 

Caedmon, 40-42. 
Caesar, invasion by, 2. 
Canterbury Tales, 128-140; Cax- 

ton's edition, 162. 
Catholicism, in Richard RoUe, 92 ; 

in Piers Plowman, 114. See 

also Reformation. 
Caxton, 162-164. 
Celts, in Britain, 2-6; in Gaul, 23; 

Irish missionaries to England, 

41 ; legends of, in romance, 58- 

^d; influence of language of, on 

Old English, 24, 30. 



189 



I go 



EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Charlemagne, in romance, 58 ; op- 
posed to the Danes, 7. 

Chaucer, 120-140; contemporaries 
of, 98-119; imitators of, 141- 
147; mentioned, 81, 83. 

Chivalry, rooted in feudalism, 58 ; 
moral tone of, 59-65 ; collapse 
of, 98, 164; romances of, see 
Romances. 

Chrestien of Troyes, 59-61, 64, 

65. 

Christianity, brought to Britain, 4, 
6 ; allusions to, in Beowulf, 36 ; 
effect of, in Old English litera- 
ture, 41, 42, 45, 57. See also 
Religion. 

Chronicle, English, 50, 51. 

Church, see Clergy, Christianity, 
Reformation, Religion. 

Classics, influence of, see Revival 
of Learning, Drama. 

Claudius, conquest of Britain 
under, 2. 

Cleanness, 104-108. 

Clergy, satirized in Land of Co- 
kaygne, 87-89 ; in Piers Plow- 
man, 109, 114 ; by Skelton, 166, 
167; by Erasmus, 175, 176; 
power of, 1 01 ; corruptness of, 
90, 100, loi, 117, 165. See also 
Friars, Monasteries. 

Clerks, 83. 

Cokaygne, The Land of, 87-89. 

Colyn Cloute, 165-167. 

Complaint to Pity, 124. 

Confessio Amantis, 11 5-1 19, 162. 

Constantinople, fall of, 172. 

Court of Love, The, 143-147. 

Cuckoo Song, 82, 83. 

Cynewulf, 43-47. 



Dame Siriz, 84, 89. 

Danes, invasion by, 7-9; effect 

upon English language, 31; do. 

upon literature, 48, 50. 
Dante, 125. 
Dialects, Old English, 21 ; Middle 

English, 28, 29 ; confusion of, in 

MSS., 48 ; supremacy of East 

Midland, 29, 115. 
Drama, early forms, 1 57-1 61 ; later 

development, 185. 

Edward, 155. 
Edward III, 98. 
Elene, 43-47- 
Elizabethan age, 184-188. 
English language, see Old English, 

Middle English. 
Erasmus, 171, 17 3-1 81. 
Euphues, Euphuism, 187. 
Exeter Book, 32, 43. 
Exodus, 41. 

Fabliaux, 84-91, 159. 

Faerie Queene, 187, 188. 

Fatalism, iii Beoivulf 39. 

Feudal system, 11, 12 ; an element 
in chivalry, 58 ; collapse of, 99, 
164. 

French language, in England, 13, 
14; related to Old English and 
German, 16, 17 ; to Latin, 23, 
24 ; influence of, on Middle 
English, 25-28. 

French literature, written in Eng- 
land, 51; influence of, see Ro- 
mance, Fabliaux, Gower, Chau- 
cer, Romaunt of the Rose. 

Friars, attacked by Wyclif, 102 ; 
by Langland, 109, 129 ; by Chau- 
cer, 129. See also Clergy. 



INDEX 



191 



Galahad, 65. 

Gawayne, 62. 

Gawayne and the Green Knight^ 
71, 104, 106. 

Genesis, 41. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 58, 73. 

German language, relation of,' to 
English, 17-21. See also Teu- 
tonic. 

Golden Legend, 164. 

Gorboduc, 185. 

Gower, 11 4-1 19; posthumous repu- 
tation of, 115, 142, 145. 

Grail, The, 61-65. 

Greek in universities, 178. See 
also Revival of Learning. 

Grimm's Law, 18, 20. 

Guinevere, 59, 71. 

Henry VII, 164. 
Henry VIII, 180. 
Henryson, 142. 
History, mediaeval idea of, 6Z. 
Hoccleve, see Occleve. 
Holy Grail, 61-65. 
Humanism, 173-178. 
Hymns, Latin, 57. 

Indo-European family of lan- 
guages, 15. 

Italian literature, early Renaissance 
in, 122, 172; influence of, on 
Chaucer, 125, 126; do. in six- 
teenth century, 181, 182. 

James I of Scotland, 143. 

Judith, 47. 

Jutes, 5, 6; dialect of, 21. 

Kent, settlement of, 6 ; overlord- 
ship of, 7. 



King Horn, 69, 70. 
Kingis Quair, 143-147. 

Lancelot, Launcelot, 59, 62,, 71. 

Lancelot of the Lake, 71. 

Langland, see Piers Plowman. 

Latin language, in Britain, 3 ; re- 
lation of, to French, 23, 24; in- 
fluence of, on Old English, 24 ; 
the language of the monasteries, 
42, 49, 51; of Gower, 116; of 
Erasmus, 173, 174. 

Layamon, 65-70, 73. 

Legend of Good Women, 126-128. 

Lollards, 103; mentioned, 117. 

Love, in romances, 60, 61, 64, 65, 
70 ; in Fabliaux, 89 ; in Gower, 
118; in Chaucer, 124-127; in 
Romaunt of the Rose, 122-124; 
in lyrics, 82, 181-184, 186. 

Luther, 178-180. 

Lydgate, 141. 

Lyly, 186, 187. 

Lyrics, Middle English, 82-84 ; 
Renaissance, 181-184; Eliza- 
bethan, 186. 

Malory, 62-64, 71-76, 141, 162. 

Manuscripts, destruction of, 52 ; 
cost of, 163. 

Map, Walter, 61, n. 

Maundevile, Travels of, 148-152. 

Mendicancy, 54-57, 113. 

Mercia, overlordship of, 7 ; liter- 
ary supremacy, 45 ; dialect of, 
21 ; do. in Middle English, 22, 
28. 

Middle English, 25-29 ; compared 
with Modern, 130, 131. 

Miracle Plays, 157-159. 



192 



EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Monasteries, 41, 42 ; narrowing 
influence of, 49 ; as storehouses 
of MSS., 52; decay of, 90,91, 
164. See also Clergy. 

Morality Plays, 1 58-161, 185. 

Morals, philosophy of, 187, 188. 
See also Clergy, Monasteries. 

More, Sir Thomas, 177, 178, 180. 

Morte Arthur^ 71. 

Morte Darthur^ see Malory. 

Mysticism, 57, 150. 

Nature, in Beowulf^ 38, 39 ; con- 
ventional description of, 124, 
143 ; allegorical treatment of, 
81, 150; in lyrics and ballads, 
see 82, 153. 

Norman Conquest, 9-14 ; effect 
of, on English language, 24-28 ; 
on Old English literature, 51, 
52 ; on Middle English do., see 
French literature. 

Northmen, in England, 7-9; in 
Normandy, 9. 

Northumberland, overlordship of, 
7 ; literary supremacy, 40 ; dia- 
lect of, 21 ; do. in Middle Eng- 
lish, 28. 

Occleve, 141, 142. 

Old English language, 21-23; 
transition from, to Middle Eng- 
lish, 25. 

Old English literature, 32-52. 

Old Norse, 31. 

Pagan spirit, in Beowulf^ 39 ; 

Cynewulf, 45, 46 ; Judith^ 47. 
Parliament, 99. 
Patience^ 104, 106. 



Patrick, St., 4, 41. 

Pearly 104, 106-108; 122, 124. 

Petrarch, 125, 172. 

Piers Plowman, 1 08-1 14, 129; 

allegory in, 159, 160; compared 

with Utopia, 177. 
Praise of Folly, 174-178. 
Pricke of Cons debtee, 92-97, 188. 
Printing, invention of, 162-164. 
Pronunciation, Chaucer's, 130. 
Prose, of Bede, 42 ; ^Elfred, 49; 

Malory, 62-64, 71-76 ; Maunde- 

vile, 148-151 ; Lyly, 187. 
Protestantism, see Reformation. 

Quest of the Holy Grail, 7 1 . 

Reformation, 178-180; preluded 
by Lollardry, 103. 

Religion, of Britons, 2 ; of early 
English, 6 ; in Cynewulf, 45 ; 
Alliterative Poems, 104-108 ; in 
fourteenth century, 100-103 ; 
conflict with science, 149, 150. 
See also Christianity, Asceticism, 
Theology, Grail, Clergy, Monas- 
teries, Catholicism. 

Renaissance, 162-188. 

Revival of Learning, 172-178, 
187, 188. 

Reynard the Fox, 85, 162. 

Riddles, Old English, 45. 

RoUe, Richard, of Hampole, 91- 

97. 
Romances of Chivalry, 53-76, 

1 06 ; contrasted with fabliaux, 

88-90. 
Romaunt of the Rose, 122-124 ; 

influence on Chaucer, 124, 125, 

127; on others, 124, 143-147. 



INDEX 



193 



Rome, conquest of Britain by, 
2-4 ; Church of, see Catholi- 
cism, Christianity, Reformation. 

Roses, Wars of, 164. 

Round Table, see Arthur. 

Runes, in Cynewulf, 44. 

Satire, in fabliaux^ etc., 84-91 ; 
Piers Plowman^ 1 09-1 12, 114, 
129; Chaucer, 129 ; Skelton, 
165-169; Erasmus, 174-176. 

Saxons, 4-6; dialect of, 21. See 
also W ess ex. 

Schools, French spoken in, 13, 
14. See also Universities. 

Science, mediaeval, 80, 149-152; 
Renaissance, 173, 177. 

Scotch dialect, 29. 

Sir Patrick Spens, 154. 

Skelton, 164-169. 

Sonnet, 182, 183. 

Speculum Meditantis, 115. 

Spenser, 187, 188. 

Summoner'*s Tale, 129. 

Surrey, 180-183, 186. 

Teutonic languages, 16-21 ; leg- 
ends in English romance, 69. 

Theology, mediaeval, 171, 175; 
Renaissance, 173, 178, 179. 

Thomas Aquinas, 170, 171. 

Tragedy, 185. 

Transubstantiation, 102 ; Lang- 
land's belief in, 114. 

Troiliis and Cressida, 126, 127 ; 
imitated by Henryson, 142; 
stanza-form of, 147. 



Troy legend in romance, 58. 
Tunnyng of Elynoicr Riimmyng, 
167-169. 

Universities, mediaeval, 169-172; 
Revival of Learning at, 178, 
180, 181 ; influence of, on Eng- 
lish dialects, 29 ; on early secu- 
lar literature, 83 ; on drama, 

185. 

Utopia, 177, 178, 180. 

Vercelli Book, 43. 

Versification, Old English, 36, 
37 ; Lay am on, 66 ; King Horn, 
70; Alliterative Poems, 104; 
Chaucer, 130 ; Rime Royal, 
147 ; ballad stanza, 153 ; 
Skelton, 165; the sonnet, 182, 
183; blank verse, 183. 

Vox and the Wolf, 85-87. 

Vox Clarnantis, 115. 

Wace, (y(^, 68. 

Welsh, see Celts. 

Wessex, overlordship of, 7 ; su- 
premacy of, in literature, 48- 
50 ; dialect of, 22 ; in Middle 
English, 28. 

West Saxons, see Wessex. 

Widsith, 32-34. 

Wife of Bathes Tale, 130-140; 
Gower's version of, 118, 119. 

William the Conqueror, 10, 12,13. 

Wyatt, 180-184, 186. 

Wyclif, 102, 103. 

Wyrd, in Beowulf, 39. 



